


Optics, Optimized

by SignedSealedAndDigitized



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (Although It's Not Hard to Interpret it Otherwise), Angst and Humor, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Get ready for a plethora of snarky remarks., I Love Exposition, Multiple Original Background Characters, Plot on Plot on Plot, Reader is kind of a smartass., Reader-Insert, Rebuilding the First Order, Second-Person POV, Slow Burn, Slowly-Developing Romance, Takes Place During and After Episode VII, Watch me self-correct my automatic tendency to avoid the romance in romance stories., Who wants to read thousands of words about lightsaber technology and optics?, implied female reader, the slowest of slow burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-16 13:33:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9274253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SignedSealedAndDigitized/pseuds/SignedSealedAndDigitized
Summary: Five years of university, two degrees, an optical engineering major, a human languages minor, analienlanguages minor, and a semi-successful art habit, and what had come of it? An absurd amount of student loans left to pay and a relatively low-ranking position as a First Order tech specialist.





	1. Chapter I

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written a Star Wars fanfiction before, I've never actually written _any_ fanfiction before, et cetera, et cetera.
> 
> Also, I didn't want to jump right into direct interaction in the first chapter because it seemed unrealistic, so this is quite exposition-y. Fear not, though, as you'll see far more of Angsty Knight soon enough.
> 
> Any and all feedback is incredibly appreciated. Please don't hesitate to grill me as you see fit.

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_Five years of university, two degrees, an optical engineering major, a human languages minor, an _alien_ languages minor, and a semi-successful art habit, and what had come of it? An absurd amount of student loans left to pay and a relatively low-ranking position as a First Order tech specialist._

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\--------------------

You liked the relative efficiency with which operations were conducted and the overall clean and cold feeling of the work environment, but not a hell of a lot else. The people were fine, the work was fine, the living arrangements were fine, but absolutely nothing about your day-to-day job was striking. Both on-base and onboard the Finalizer (the more portable of the Order's floating death machines), life was, unfortunately, painfully average. 

To fend off the pull to an entirely average existence, you did what you could to subtly fight the system: The walls of your quarters were bedecked with highly-flammable sketches. You jury-rigged a doorbell that set a different tone to each unique biosignature that the scanner on the door panel picked up (so you knew when to open your door and when to pretend you weren't home). You only attended mandatory staff meetings two-thirds of the time. You didn't keep your ID tag clearly visible whenever you were on the workroom floor. You altered your Order-issued uniform. (After all, what better method existed to quietly make a mark for oneself than sartorial insubordination?) Only hours after receiving it from the welcoming committee, you hemmed your work jacket so that it fell just into the ‘rebelliously short’ range. After that had gotten through a few days of wear without you being rebuked for it, you added some edgy two-toned knee patches to your trousers. A few days after _that_ , upon learning that dyeing your hair was out of the question if you wanted to keep your job, you dyed every single pair of white socks that you had bright red. As for the standard-issue work boots, well, _those_ you had simply ignored from the start.

However, despite all of your work on the jacket and the pants and the socks, most of the other engineers--and a few of the stormtroopers and other enforcement-types--recognized you by the black-rimmed safety goggles that you were never without. Your goggles were your notable, undeniable, unforgettable trademark.

They were one of the few things you’d brought with you when you made the move from your rather nice little apartment on Coruscant to a miniscule section of the giant sardine can that was the Finalizer’s lower deck. Although you pulled them down over your eyes whenever you stepped onto the repair floor, most of the time you kept them atop your forehead, pressed back into your hair with a scanner or drill bit or some other little gizmo held behind your ear with the elastic band. The clear lenses rendered them all but useless for welding and live laser-work, so you kept an identical, nearly opaque pair in your toolbox. 

Your secondary defining characteristic was that you tended to listen to music whenever you worked. _Without_ headphones. (Yes, you were _that_ employee.) While your selections varied a bit with your mood, your mood didn’t vary much. Nine out of ten times, you’d have some mellow electronic something-or-other without any words filtering through your workspace; that tenth time, you’d play anything from smooth jazz to complicated classical to dissonant post-modern blips and twangs. This behavior was met with mixed reactions (particularly on that tenth time). While your supervisor seemed to mind a bit too much, a handful of the other engineers actively encouraged it because for them, it meant entertainment on the job without the chance to catch any flak for unprofessional behavior.

So, for as stoic, silent, and overall unfriendly as you were most of the time, you were in pretty good standing with the engineering sector.

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\--------------------

It was on an ordinary Tuesday that you sat at your workbench, entertaining yourself with the thought that, when placed against your timid coworkers, you almost looked like the sector’s resident rebel. As you fiddled with a cracked focusing lens on a laser rifle, one of your work friends, Nat, ducked into your makeshift workshop (‘workshop’ meaning a small section of Engineering Room Three that you'd walled off with six empty tool cabinets). You greeted him without looking up. 

“How are you, Nat?”

“Oh, I’m alright,” he said with a sigh. “Had to do last-minute patch jobs on a couple of blasters. The rest of it was just filing the work reports.” He watched you work for a moment with crossed arms, fingers drumming rhythmically across his biceps. “No music today?”

Tired of tiptoeing your way through the repair, you shoved the end of the screwdriver into the gap between the glass and the metal mount; almost immediately, the cracked lens popped out with a ping. You set down the tool and glanced up at him. “Oh, yeah. I guess not.” You waved a hand in the direction of the little speaker sitting atop one of the empty tool cabinets. “Turn something on if you want to, by all means. What was the patch job for?”

“Oh, the heat sinks were busted, nothing major.” He left the speaker alone and leaned back against one of the tool cabinets. It started to roll away when he put his weight on it, but he quickly tugged it back and kicked the brake into place.

You ignored his clumsiness (displays such as this were not at all uncommon for him) and nodded. “Yeah, pretty basic. I figured it’d be something more than _that_. They just had that battle on one of the forestial planets, right?”

He furrowed his brows in thought. “No...wasn’t it a desert planet this time? Jakku, something like that?”

“I thought that Jakku was last week...” You rolled your eyes and laughed through your nose, waving it off. “Whatever. I’d say it’s pretty clear that we don’t keep track down here.”

As soon as Nat began to reply, Marsa, the second member of your ~~absolutely massive~~ two-person friend group, ducked in. She promptly hopped up to sit on the table; you ducked forward in your chair to catch the gimlet and center punch that she sent rolling off the edge. Marsa seemed not to notice. You huffed at her under your breath.

“So, either one of you know anything about repairing lightsabers?” she asked, setting her legs in an ankle-knee cross. She looked between you and Nat with a hopeful glint in her eye. Nat ran a hand through his hair and shrugged.

“Yeah, a bit,” you replied as you slid your goggles onto your forehead. You knew far more than a bit, actually; lightsaber tech was something of a closet obsession of yours. “The focusing instrumentation, mostly. Hilt design, too. Oh, and a bit about blade thermodynamics.” Well, you’d successfully curtailed your saber lover’s soliloquy into an elevator pitch. “Why do you ask, Marsa?”

“Well,” she began with a gleeful grin. “Rumor has it that our favorite angsty Knight of Ren’s saber is on the blink.”

 _The dreaded Angsty Knight, huh?_ “Oh, no, the horror,” you cut back in monotone, face blank. Nat and Marsa looked on in pleasant anticipation of the punchline; you had a tendency to get a bit carried away with your sarcastic ravings. 

“Whatever will he tear through the walls of the ship with now? Certainly a stress ball to deal with his frustrations is out of the question. Nat-” You swiveled in your chair to face him, taking on a slightly concerned expression in the process. “Quickly. You need to engineer something that necessitates as many repairs to the environment as possible so that he can replace the saber with it while it’s in the shop. You _must_.”

Nat chuckled obligingly. “I’ll see what I can whip up. Shouldn’t he be able to fix his own lightsaber, though? I thought that was part of the deal of lightsaber ownership.”

Marsa smirked. “I guess not if your superiors don’t trust you to fix it without causing a massive explosion of some sort. You heard about his latest meltdown, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, but do you think _he_ of all people would willingly give away his favorite thing except for that melted helmet he worships?”

“Wait, melted helmet? Please explain.”

“I never told you? I had to repair a command console that he slashed through one time and passed by-”

You ignored their banter and began rubbing away the goggle marks around your eyes. It wasn’t the thought of being assigned to the task of repairing the saber that gave you anxiety; it was more the image of your perfectionism eating away at you from the inside out while you worked on it that gave you anxiety (that, and your mild concern that you’d want a lightsaber for yourself after the job was done). Realizing that Nat and Marsa had fallen silent, you spoke up. “You realize that I’m going to get asked to do this. They brought me on as a specialist.”

Marsa gave you a flippant scoff. “Oh, come on, you’re just one of the newbies. You don’t honestly think they’d give you such an important task?”

You watched her bangs swing back and forth for a bit before flicking your (now slightly peevish) gaze down to her eyes. “Hey, all that I know is that they asked me to start drawing up plans for a new set of defensive laser lenses my first week in.”

Marsa’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? You’re kidding.”

You shot back a tight-lipped smile. “Nope, not kidding.” With that, you stood from your workbench, cracked your knuckles, and clicked off the integrated lights in the surface of the work table one by one. “Well, I have to go pick up a new lens for this rifle. Feel free to stay, but I’ll be gone a while.” They both nodded, and the three of you filtered out before exchanging subdued ‘see-you-later’s.

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At dinner that night, the engineering table was awash with gossip about the not-yet-confirmed lightsaber break. You did your best to maintain a conversation with Nat and Marsa about something else, _anything_ else. Talking about such a one-note topic, and one that was still pure speculation at that, did not make for interesting dinner conversation. Not to mention the fact that talking about Kylo Ren at _all_ would lead to at least one of you loudly mocking him in the presence of a ton of your coworkers. That didn't exactly bode well for a quick promotion.

You decided that raising the topic of the best metal finishes (brushed titanium was your personal favorite) would be the perfect thing to resuscitate your dying argument about whether it’d be better to work with a human or droid partner, and were just about to bring it up when one of your coworkers (Alan? Albert? Steve?) from the other end of the table called out to you. You set down your fork and turned.

“Hey, you’re the new specialist, right? Optical engineer?” He scrunched up his face as he strained to listen for your reply over everyone else’s chatter.

You did absolutely nothing to elevate your volume. “Yes. What of it?”

You must have come off colder than you intended (This happened to be an exceptionally common problem of yours, and probably explained why you had so few friends), as he seemed a bit wounded by your curt reply. “Uh...I, uh, just wanted to wish you good luck on that, uh, that saber repair job. That’s gonna be a real bitch to fix.”

You nodded acceptance of his well-wishes. _And such eloquent well-wishes, too._ “Uh-huh. Thanks.” ~~Clearly, you were moved.~~ You rolled your eyes. How did he even know if you’d be the one to get assigned to the job in the first place?

You realized as you turned back to your plate that _that_ little exchange had certainly been enough to regain Nat and Marsa’s attention. After casting a quick glance to the other end of the table, Marsa leaned in across it, bringing her face close to yours. You smelled her dinner on her breath and crinkled your nose. “You know Sam has a thing for you, right?” she stage-whispered through cupped hands, sending more stew smell your way.

 _Sam. **That’s** his name._ “No,” you replied with a level of excitement typically afforded to giving someone the time of day. “I didn’t.”

“Well, don’t you just seem _thrilled_ to hear it,” Nat chuckled.

You shrugged and returned to your food (another thing about your job that was solidly in the ‘not good or bad, just...fine’ category). While Nat and Marsa continued doing what they loved best, annoying the hell out of you, you ate. After four more bites, you set down your fork again and leaned back as much as one could while sitting on a backless bench. You were just about to announce to your supposed ‘friends’ (both of whom still seemed hell-bent on pursuing this 'Sam-loves-you-more-than-life-itself' thing to the end of time) that you were heading back to the shop to work on one of your side projects when one of the suits from the upper deck stopped next to your table. You sat up straight and repressed a groan. This was it, wasn’t it?

“Are you the optical engineer?” 

You watched your fork slide from the edge of your plate, watched the handle slide into the sauce, as you considered how best to phrase your reply. Would you be up-front, announce all of your credentials, ID number, and full name (last, first, and middle, in that order)? Or perhaps not, perhaps you would do your level best to point them elsewhere, convince them that you weren’t the person for the job, send them to Sam or some other coworker that you didn’t care about. Or maybe you wouldn’t reply at all, let the suit scoff at you, think of you as some terrified incompetent, and move on to ask somebody else.

You finally settled on giving an up-front reply. _It’s the goggles, damn it. I’ll never be able to escape the influence of my stylish calling card._ You exhaled, inhaled, and turned to look the suit straight in the eye. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Would you follow me, please? There’s a problem with the focusing crystal on one of the projectors.”

You almost melted into a relieved puddle on the dining hall floor, _almost_ , but not quite. Grad school had done a fantastic job of teaching you how to conceal your feelings in front of an audience. “Yes, of course,” you said with just a whisper of added relief in your tone. You immediately rose to your feet and started out behind the suit, who you now assumed was some sort of courier, with an incredibly forced calm and casual stride. Even after rounding the bend into the hallway, you could still make out Marsa and Nat’s snickering.

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On the walk to the projector room, you discovered that the ship’s interminable corridors seemed far more terminable when one was coming down from an adrenaline high. It felt like only a moment had passed since you were in the company of your irritating pals. The hallways of the upper deck were much emptier than those below; this came as a bit of a surprise, as you knew of a former classmate who worked up top and supposedly spent most of her time running from one meeting room to another. Perhaps she was a rarer breed of worker than you'd thought.

Rather than run the risk of having to drop into conversation with your as-of-yet nameless escort, you turned to look out the window. Your own reflection caught you by surprise; despite the presence of your fun and quirky safety goggles, you looked _positively exasperated_. Marsa had been right about you having a resting death glare after all. You tried raising your eyebrows, but just looked condescending. _Oh you are, are you?_ your eyebrows seemed to say. _You really thought **that** was the right thing to do, huh?_ The facial expression training session was swiftly abandoned, and you decided to focus on the dark and quiet beauty of space instead.

It didn’t last. They were blowing up planets from the base today, apparently. You watched the ruby glow from the beams filter in through the windows and bleed across the polished floors. The measured footsteps of Unnamed Finalizer Employee That Could Have Just Given You Directions Instead of Accompanying You, A.K.A. Suit, slowed, then came to a full stop.

“It’s just this next room on the right, if you’ll…”

You glanced back over your shoulder, visibly irritated by the interruption. “Ah, yes.” You readjusted your goggles. “Sorry about that. I was just basking in the glow of the indomitable power of the First Order’s weaponry. Please, lead the way.”

Suit seemed pleased by your remark. You put a mental pin in that. _Note to self: mid-level employees are incapable of understanding sarcasm._ With a confident sway in your stride, you turned (more like twirled; the floors were slippery) into the projector room in question-

-and stopped with such immediacy it was a wonder that your boots didn't fly out from under you. Helmet: on. Cape: billowing. Lightsaber: holstered at the hip. ~~Dick: out.~~ He stood in the center of the main window, leaning into the windowsill as the streaks of red slid by. The Angsty Knight in all his glory. The rest of the room was dead silent.

You prided yourself for not laughing at the display. You were unable to completely stifle your almost-laugh, however. To your dismay, by the time it passed your lips, it had warped into a cough dangerously similar to an ‘a-hem’. You did not want to ‘a-hem’ _anyone_ never mind Kylo _Fucking_ Ren-- aaaaand...too late. You had ‘a-hem’-ed. 

The helmet started to turn your way, far too deliberately to be taken as an idle gesture. Clearly, you had interrupted some moment of deep and meaningful reflection. _Problem. ProbLEM. PROBLEM. Very, very NOT good. The helmet is STILL TURNING. Solve the problem. Be charming, CHARMING, damn it! THE HELMET HAS ALMOST COMPLETED ITS TURN. Think FAST. **THE HELMET IS NEARLY FINISHED TURNING. THINK FASTER.**_

“So,” you said about twice as loudly as necessary to your Suit, your only friend, as you pointed at the only projector in the room. “The projector.”

It was not your finest moment.


	2. Chapter II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're back at the base, and it's time to accept the inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fear not, readers. You'll see a lot more of our favorite Angsty Knight in this chapter...after some more exposition.

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A few days had passed since the incident in the projector room, but it seemed like your pride would never recover. You’d told Nat and Marsa about seeing Angsty Knight face to face- well, face to mask, but couldn’t bring yourself to tell them anything else about what was arguably the biggest workplace catastrophe of your life.

You’d just landed back at Starkiller Base, and disembarking procedures had commenced. Docking procedures had been smooth as always; on a craft as large as the Finalizer, most flight path adjustments were so comparatively minor that you'd need to concentrate to feel any turbulence at all. (Not that turbulence mattered to you; the litany of low-cost flights you’d taken to get to the First Order from your apartment had numbed you to any spaceflight incidents short of ship-wide explosions.) Although you’d left most of your tools in the Finalizer’s shop, a few of them, specialty instruments you’d purchased yourself, always traveled with you. Those, along with most of your clothes and a few other personal articles, weighted down the regulation duffel bag that inexorably knocked into every single person you tried to slip past. 

As you descended the primary exit ramp into the main loading bay, you caught a glimpse of Suit on the floor below. They were waiting for orders from their boss amid a small sea of lackeys, had apparently gotten distracted, and had somehow picked you out from the sea of lower deck staff filtering out of the ship. Then, Suit, that _traitor_ , had the nerve to _smirk_ at you. You stopped in your tracks, and could almost see your animosity cut into Suit’s poor little heart in the glare you returned.

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_“So. The projector,” you had said to Suit twice as loudly as was necessary. Ignoring your miscalculation with volume, it wasn’t **that** much of a faux-pas. Your tone had been normal enough. Your eyes, however, pleaded for support. A ‘yes’ was all that was necessary. Or a nod. A nod would’ve worked. A simple nod would’ve legitimized your comment, legitimized your presence in the room entirely._

_The moment of silence that followed felt like ten minutes, twenty, thirty. Then Suit, that **fucker** , just up and left the room without a second thought, leaving you all alone to pick up the pieces. Leaving you with **them**. Leaving you with **him**._

_So glued was your focus to the six square inches containing the projector’s busted mechanism that you doubted you would’ve noticed if General Hux and the Supreme Leader had skipped in arm in arm, whistling Corellian lullabies. You doubted you’d ever rewired **anything** that quickly in your entire life. If you had been close enough to the door, you would’ve stealth-rolled out. Instead, you stood up, kept your eyes glued to the **fascinating** projector room floor, and saw yourself out-_

_-before promptly seeing yourself **in** again to retrieve all of the tools you forgot to take with you. **Then** you saw yourself out._

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The weight of Nat’s hand on your shoulder pulled you out of your trance. You turned to him, feeling the muscles in your forehead loosen as you forced them to relax. _Wow, is that sweat on the back of my neck? Am I actually **sweating** with rage?_ He smiled, but concern wrinkled his brow. “Hey, are you okay?” You shrugged his hand away and turned back in Suit’s direction. It seemed that your stare had cut a small path through the crowd. _Not bad_.

“...New enemy?” You turned back again and assessed Nat’s quirked eyebrow.

“Yeah.” You looked back at the lackeys. “New one for the list.” Suit was still frozen in place by your stare. You considered menacingly dragging your index finger across your neck before turning away for good, but didn’t know how well death threats went over with The Establishment.

Nat didn’t press. _Good_. You pulled the strap of your bag back onto your shoulder and continued plodding down the ramp. “Come on, let’s grab something to eat before the dining hall gets crowded. I’m pretty sure it’s pasta day.”

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Three hours later, you were were fed, unpacked, and back in your chilly second home. At the base, the engineering department had an entire _wing_ , not just a section of a deck. You passed the fab lab, where machinery milled and drilled away, churning out _more_ machinery; the weapon design division, whose inhabitants always tracked modeling clay shavings everywhere; the aeronautical division, where everyone always looked a little too happy after the latest engine prototype explosion; the astronautical division, where everyone looked like their entire month was ruined after the latest engine prototype explosion; and the armor repair shop, where there were always six to eight stormtroopers hiding out to avoid their assigned rounds; before arriving in your division: specialty tech development and repairs. ~~For a galaxy full of lasers and holograms, you’d think they would have an optics department.~~ The door hissed and slid open. You pulled down your goggles, rolled up your sleeves, and stepped in.

Here, the team was much smaller than the teams stationed on each of five Massive Rooms of Miscellaneous Flavors of Engineering on the Finalizer, and a bit more tight-knit. In other words, everyone complained about their jobs more and minded that you played music less. Nat and Marsa were further away (Nat was over in weapons repair and Marsa fluttered between aero and astro), but that was probably better for your productivity anyway.

You pulled your little speaker out of your pocket and turned it on. A tune with a calm melody, but intense underlying beat, began to bounce from metal surface to metal surface. You locked a half-deconstructed cauterization laser from the med bay into position on a table-mounted vice and set to work. In the span of about forty-five seconds, the rest of the world faded away.

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“...the one in the goggles?”

“Yup, that’s the one.”

You heard the conversation, but it didn’t register until you had _another_ suit standing in front of you asking if you were the optical engineer. _Well, sir, I’m working on a lens for a laser-powered instrument right now with the aid of **other** lenses and lasers, so clearly I work in food services._ This time, you had absolutely zero anxiety about your answer; you nodded and looked up.

This suit looked less seasoned than Suit. He looked new, cautious and jittery, not yet over his case of first-month nerves. “This is a sensitive matter," he murmured. "Your discretion is required.”

You sat up, pushed up your goggles, and reached for the volume control on your speaker. Once the music was about five times louder than before, you let go. “What is it?”

He looked to the speaker, then to the other engineers wrapped up in their own work, then to the speaker again, clearly trying to decide whether your lazy solution offered sufficient privacy. “It’s a, um, specialty repair to be completed as soon as possible…” he began. “The details are in the- look, could you just follow me, please? I don’t actually have the item with me; it’s above my authority.”

You stood up and turned the speaker off. A few of your co-workers glanced toward your station; you shrugged and raised your eyebrows at them as you tossed a few drill bits into a toolbox. _Oh, come on_ , you thought. _Is this really a surprise to any of you?_ By the time you closed the latch on the toolbox lid, they were all working on (or pretending to work on) their own builds and repairs again. With your hands on your hips, you gave your work area a final once-over. In a last-minute decision to throw your jacket on over your less-than-professional tee shirt, you grabbed it from the back of your chair and shoved your arms into the sleeves; a pop of your shoulders pulled it on the rest of the way. A tiny part of you hoped that the gesture looked cool to the messenger, but he seemed too wrapped up in his own problems to notice. No matter. You fixed the collar and gave your chair a spin as you stepped out of your workspace. “Please,” you said to Suit 2.0. “Lead the way.”

Your second voyage in the company of a go-between from the command sector couldn’t have been more different from the first. You followed Suit 2.0 with a long stride and crossed arms, rolling your shoulders every once in a while. Outside, a massive snow storm blew past. Distant walls of trees bent in the wind. Closer to the base, stormtroopers performed drills and tested equipment in the punishing cold. Further out, a team of snipers worked on picking off targets sculpted out of snow. You remembered how the first time you landed at the base after getting shipped in, you’d made a promise to yourself that you’d get out there at least once. Well, that hadn’t happened yet. You hadn’t even gotten close.

You followed Suit 2.0 into a small boardroom where two stormtroopers stood behind a third who sported a white pauldron and held a plain black box with both hands. Thoroughly prepared to accept your fate, you stepped forward. The stormtrooper holding the box began her speech.

“Understand that you have been selected for this task due to your position as an optical engineering specialist.” You nodded. “It should go without saying that this matter is to be treated with extreme discretion.” You nodded again. _So much bureaucracy._ You wondered when you’d be presented with a waiver to sign. “You will be required to-” You sighed and held up a hand. _Is it possible to tell that someone is taken aback through a helmet that completely covers their face? Apparently so._ You continued anyway. 

“I will be required to repair or replace the focusing crystal of Kylo Ren’s personal lightsaber as quickly and efficiently as possible, is that correct?”

The stormtrooper seemed residually offended by your interruption, but she nodded. (Hey, you weren’t enlisted; you didn't need to follow the military code of conduct.) “Affirmative. You are not to speak to _anyone_ about this repair, and should await further instruction for returning the weapon. You have twenty-four hours to complete the repair.”

You tilted your head toward the box in her hands. “That’s it, I take it?” She nodded. You reached for it, but soon reconsidered your hastiness and withdrew your hand. “...May I?”

You could hear her exasperated sigh through her helmet. “Take the weapon.”

You took the box in one hand and stuck it in your jacket pocket just to see if you’d get a rise out of the stormtroopers for your apparent carelessness. _That’d be a strong yes._ “Well…” You gave the box a pat and turned on your heel. “See you in twenty-four hours.”

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During the walk back to the engineering wing (you’d managed to shake off Suit 2.0 and return by yourself), you tucked the box inside your jacket to hide it a bit. For as much as you scoffed at sneered at Kylo Ren’s antics with your pals when he wasn’t around, you understood that this box contained one of the best tools that the First Order had against the pesky Resistance groups and dissenters that threatened security every so often. In a way, it also contained your career, your future, your life… The skin on the back of your neck prickled and you tucked the box tighter under your arm. 

Not to mention the fact that unless he was unconscious (which was possible) or unaware that it had been taken (which was unlikely), its owner couldn’t be far away.

Nat and Marsa pounced as soon as you passed under the ‘Specialty Tech Dept.’ sign. Gossip travelled quickly in the engineering department. You waved them off with the arm that _wasn’t_ keeping your life-in-a-box pinned against your chest. “Hold on, hold on. Let’s be a little discreet about this, huh?” The pair followed you back to your workstation, looking like two kids about to enjoy their joint birthday party.

“Now,” you explained as removed your jacket, careful to keep the box thoroughly concealed within the fabric as you wadded it up and placed it in the center of the table. “I’m not sure what you two think just happened, but I just got out of a _very_ taxing meeting about my conduct in the projector room a few days ago. So-” You rapped your fist against the table. “How about we head back to your room, Marsa, listen to some music, and have a few drinks from your secret stash? What do you say?” Hopefully, that would work; one thing about Marsa was that she was _never_ not in the mood to drink. 

She grinned. “Sure, let’s go.”

 _Well, that was easy._ “Nat? You coming?” He nodded. 

“Just let me box up a couple of things. I had to repair a _ton_ of blasters today; must’ve been a big battle when they stopped on Takodana. Apparently, they ran into that renegade stormtrooper and his Resistance buddies. I hear the med bay’s still swamped, too…” You happened to know that Nat’s older brother was a stormtrooper, in addition to three or four of his cousins, and couldn’t help but wonder how they’d fared. You could read from his expression that at least one of them was a patient, and probably not in good shape. _Well, that explains his willingness to drink._ Nat pushed off from the table and set out for the exit. “Well, anyway, you two can get going. I’ll only be a second.”

“No problem; we can wait,” Marsa replied with a toss of her hand before turning back to you. “I have to say, I’m a little surprised. I really thought it would be the saber this time. For sure.”

You ran a hand through your hair and toyed with the strap of your goggles. “Yeah, I think everyone did. Now I’m just becoming increasingly sure that it was only an ill-founded rumor.” 

“Nope, it’s not a rumor.” You looked up to see that Nat had stopped in his tracks a few steps away from your station. “I heard from a buddy in one of the squads they brought to the planet that it was acting up. He was on the ground pretty close to Ren and said the beam flickered for two or three seconds when he activated it. Said it happened a few more times throughout the battle, too, before he disappeared into the trees.”

You rested your elbows on the table and set your chin in your hands. “Flickery, huh? I definitely think that the secondary focusing crystal is loose, then.” You smiled and stared off into space. “Damn, now I actually kind of _want_ to be assigned to the repair.”

“Well,” Marsa offered with a hopeful smile. “Maybe next time somebody from upstairs comes down, they'll ask you to do it.”

“Yeah,” you said with a wistful sigh. “Maybe.”

\--------------------  
\--------------------

You had played your friends like a damned fiddle.

With both of them safely blackout drunk in Marsa’s room, you were free to work on the repair without interruption. The specialty engineers didn’t have shifts, and those who had workstations closest to yours always came in during the day, so you’d decided on your walk back from the box hand-off that an all-nighter would be perfect for getting the lightsaber fixed.

The motion-activated lights faded on when you stepped into your workspace. Your jacket was still crumpled up on the table, exactly where you’d left it. As you pulled the folds of fabric away, you smiled to yourself, admiring the beauty of your perfect little plan. Nobody would bother a regulation-issued jacket, never mind yours, and you left it there all the time, so nothing looked remotely out of the ordinary. You still breathed a quick sigh of relief when you unveiled the still-present box, though, and another when you lifted it to check that it wasn’t empty.

They really had gone all-out with the thing. You scanned your ID tag against a small matte patch on the upper left-hand corner of the box to unlock it, then again against a restraining strap that kept the saber immobilized inside to release the hilt. Once it was freed, you reached inside and gingerly lifted it out with both hands.

Wow. That was a _lot_ of dried blood.

You pulled on a pair of gloves and twisted the hilt around in your hands, careful not to accidentally activate the blade and skewer yourself. Once you were sure that your fingers were free and clear from the activator, you raised it next to your ear and gave it a shake. Inside, something jostled. _That’ll be the focusing crystal._

You locked the hilt into a vice, placing little bits of foam between the high parts of the saber and the jaws to eliminate the chance for any unsightly scratches. After turning on enough lights to illuminate every possible portion of the weapon, you clipped a magnifying lens onto your goggles and dug around in your tool pouch.

From what Nat had said, you guessed that the focusing crystal wasn’t actually damaged, just knocked out of place. That would make for a quick and easy repair. _One that any competent lightsaber owner should be able to do, Mr. Angsty Knight._

As you were wont to do while concentrating on a job without any music on hand, you started muttering to yourself. “Access point, access point… where’s the fucking release mechanism...a-ha.” The outer panel flipped open with a click. You pulled the magnifying lens down over your right eye and peered inside the casing. “Well, this is a mess.” 

It was incredibly dusty for a start, which you didn't quite get, because it was your understanding that the inner workings of a lightsaber were to be kept free of contaminants at all costs. The wiring was tangled, and the components looked like they'd been gathered from fifteen different sources. You leaned in close and blew some of the dust out, then used a penlight to find the focusing crystal (housed just in front of the Kyber crystal). Sure enough, it had come a bit off-center. “Bingo.”

With the tightening of a single screw, you successfully completed the most stressful repair of your life. You clicked the outer panel shut again, loosened the vice grips, and let the hilt fall into your hand.

It was about the weight that you expected, but, you determined after swinging it in figure eights through the air (your best attempt at Sith Lord sparring moves), not exactly ergonomic. “Well, he does wear gloves all the time…although that’s probably because those ridiculous hand guards make the metal too hot.” With that, you paused. Did the blade _actually_ heat the metal? (Of course it would be at your most curious moment that you couldn’t remember the thesis of your own senior research project topic.) You stuck your head out of your workspace, looking unfathomably conspicuous. Everybody else was gone. _Perfect._ You ducked back inside, set the hilt snugly in your hand, let your thumb hover over the activator for a few nervous seconds and then-

The sound was beautiful _and really loud in a giant metal room_. After almost letting it slide through your hand in surprise and _almost_ cutting off half of your fingers, you decided to rest the pommel against the table instead of holding the saber in the air.

You weren’t sure how you felt about the tri-beam system--it definitely made for a _really_ stupid hand guard--but you liked the color. It was a rich red, like the last embers of a dying fire, minus the heat. Minus the _heat. Of course it didn’t give off waves of heat, moron_ , you thought to yourself. _Yikes, how could I have forgotten that? It’s a **plasma blade**. Lightsaber 101: lightsabers have plasma blades._

After the initial awe wore off, you realized that the beams of plasma issuing forth from Kylo Ren’s saber were _way_ more wavy than they should have been. In fact, they crackled, intermittently casting out little ruby flecks. Well, _that_ was just all sorts of wrong. You didn’t claim lightsaber expertise, but you definitely knew that the beams were supposed to be perfectly smooth. The problem was likely caused by a variety of factors, from the mix-and-match machinery itself to the settings to the lens calibration. You glanced at your watch. Unfortunately, there was no way you had enough time to make that many adjustments; your overseers would be by in four and a half hours, and that was a two-day job, minimum.

You deactivated the blade and were surprised to find yourself almost saddened by the absence of its hum and glow. Four and a half hours until they stopped by…whoever ‘they’ would be. “Hmm..” you mumbled to yourself. “Better to run the risk of missing their arrival and being subsequently eviscerated, or to wake up with a stiff neck? Well...” You flicked off the lights, reached for your balled-up jacket and set your head down on it, somehow not realizing that the lightsaber was still firmly in your hand. _Waking up with a stiff neck will be just fine._

\--------------------  
\--------------------

The worst way to wake up, you learned two hours later, was to have a lightsaber that did not belong to you force-pulled from your hand by its furious owner. 

Your eyes flew open and you immediately sat up stark-straight. Your goggles were still on, including the magnifying lens, but it took exactly zero seconds to identifying your terrifying alarm clock. _I didn’t put the lightsaber away. **Fuck.**_ “The-” you croaked. _And I have morning voice, too. **Perfect.**_ You quickly cleared your throat. “Your lightsaber is-”

“Silence.” You felt an invisible grip on your windpipe and, unable to do anything with your face and neck, gave him an obliging thumbs-up. _Just wait it out. You've seen this before. Hey, look on the bright side; now I won’t have to repay my student loans. That’s a plus._ You closed your eyes and waited. _Yep, there’s the sound of the instrument of my death activating. Won’t be long now…hang on. If the beam isn’t stuttering anymore…_ You felt like you were _just_ about to pass out, but forced yourself to stick it out just a bit longer to test your hypothesis, aaaaaaaand-

The pressure released and you fell back to the table, hacking and sputtering in a display you assumed could only be _incredibly_ attractive. The lightsaber still hadn’t been deactivated, though, and that had you a little concerned. You forced yourself to stop coughing and pushed your goggles up to wipe the tears out of your eyes. Ren’s posture changed slightly; was it in recognition, in remembrance of your stupid display three days ago when Suit, that _intolerable_ -

“You.”

You looked up, forcing your eyebrows as amiably high on your forehead as they could go. “Me.” 

“Do you know anything of discretion?” he snarled. “Of _tact_?”

You wanted to say ‘Do you?’ but still had some sense of self-preservation left, so you didn’t. “I understand your anger, sir, but, with all due respect, your lightsaber _is_ fixed and you _are_ here two and a half hours early-”

In a flash he was in front of you and the lightsaber’s crackling blade hovered in front of your face, resting only millimeters from your left cheek. Your eyes crossed to focus on it. 

“That is beside the point. Every time you have crossed my path, you’ve consistently proven yourself to be careless and _insolent_.”

 _Careless and insolent...ouch._ You exhaled and shifted your gaze to where you expected his eyes to be inside the (admittedly, kind of cool) helmet. _Well, last chance to make an impression. Nothing to lose but my life, right? Here goes nothing._

“Is the beam flickering anymore?” you asked slowly, deliberately, _calmly_.

“ _What?_ ” The pressure on your throat returned and you straightened in your chair even more.

You didn’t move, didn’t blink. “It’s working correctly now, right?” you forced out. You waited. He didn’t respond. The lack of air was getting to be too much; your vision became spotty and started to fade. _Wow, I haven’t been this close to dead since- oh, wait, NEVER. Last chance._ “Right?” you forced out with the last of your breath. As your brain began panicking from oxygen deprivation, you lost the ability to form any further witticisms and just stared at the table. The tension released again and you fell into another coughing fit.

“Explain yourself.”

 _With pleasure. I’d **love** thirty more seconds of being alive._ “I can see that _this_ -” You gestured at your workspace. “Hang on, I need a minute.” You took a few rattling breaths. _Okay, let’s try this again._ “That this looks careless, but please, sir, if you’ll hear me out, you’ll see that I _have_ thought it through.” He didn’t reply (and had the blade even moved slightly further from your face?), so you took a chance and continued. “Most of my coworkers are hesitant to speak to me, let alone enter my workspace, so the weapon was safe in here. My friends, the only two people who would ever come in here, are both _highly_ hungover after hours of heavy drinking; I oversaw it myself. As for falling asleep here, as I said, I, uh, oversaw...their drinking...myself...” You stifled a hoarse, exhausted laugh and put your face in your hands. _The laugh of the soon-to-be dead._

You took off your goggles and passed them mournfully from hand to hand. “Look, I’m just going to quit while I’m ahead, here. Good luck in any upcoming battles. Eviscerate lots of rebels. Enjoy testing that your lightsaber is up to standard. Naturally, I’d _prefer_ if you didn’t test it on _me_ , but who am I to tell you what to do? Just tell me when you’re going to do it, if you’d be so kind; I want to be paying attention when it happens.” The adrenaline was making you jittery, but you kept your head down and your neck still. Clear decapitation target and all that. 

You stayed there.

And stayed.

And stayed.

The blade died with a growl and you breathed a shallow sigh of relief. “I’ll be happy to perform any future repairs,” you said simply, assessing his reflection in the goggles’ lenses. He turned and left in a swirl of black fabric. You lifted your head to watch him go. “And should you find yourself in need of a personal engineer-” You flew back into your chair at the shove of an invisible hand.

“Don’t push it.”


	3. Chapter III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Badinage as a coping mechanism in life-threatening situations was quickly becoming your M.O._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -and here, dear readers, is where you'll see the chapter that _could_ have been one incredibly long, kind of rushed chapter, but got cut into two pieces instead (this being the first of those pieces).
> 
> One side effect of having this be its own chapter is that Angsty Knight doesn't make too much of an appearance. What can I say? He was preoccupied with other matters.
> 
> Edit: Changed 'Rebels' to 'Resistance' where appropriate (instances of the word 'rebel' still remain, but the name of the adversarial group has been changed in accordance with canon terminology). Man, what a glaring oversight.

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\--------------------

Of course the base would get attacked while you were taking a shower.

The alarms started blaring the moment that you finished lathering your hair. You groaned and stuck your head under the faucet. If you were going to evacuate, you sure as hell weren’t going to evacuate with a head covered in shampoo. Wet hair would be a pain in the ass to deal with in the event that you actually had to go outside, but fuck it, you’d put on a hat. After another twenty seconds or so of glorious hot water, you forced yourself to turn the tap off and reached for a towel.

Naturally, you were the only one stuck in this situation; the rest of the bathroom was deserted. You took advantage of your barren surroundings and yelled in frustration. It echoed nicely.

Now, _technically,_ you were supposed to go to your designated standby zone as soon as you heard an emergency alarm go off, but you were always the sort of kid who took the time to pack up your bag and put on your coat during a fire drill. Even though the last three attacks on the base had all been incredibly minor (the 'emergency' status had lasted less than five minutes each time), you still fully intended to stop by your quarters and pick up a few things before heading for Emergency Zone Seventeen-B. You gave your hair a final wring, slid the door open, and stepped out of the stall.

Something big slammed into the base above, and the vibration shook the room, knocking you off balance as it rocked the walls and floor. You experienced a brief loss of balance, but soon found your footing, quite possibly through pure spite for the circumstances. Moments later, the lights flickered and died. _Great._ Not only were you stuck in the shower, in the dark, in a _towel,_ but you were stuck in a dark shower in a towel on one the day when a legitimate, large-scale attack was _actually_ being mounted on the base.

Your eyes adjusted to the dark well enough that you were able to gather up your things after a few moments of sniffing in indignation. You double and triple-checked the floor and shelf of the shower for misplaced articles (because if you hadn’t started rushing when the alarm first went off, why should you start now?), then braced yourself for the walk back to your room. A chaotic din filled the bathroom as soon as the door hissed open. _Well **that** sounds fun._ With ID tag and shower caddy in hand, you stepped out into the hall sporting naught but a towel and a glower.

_Hey, I should get the laundry done while I’m taking a shower. What could possibly go wrong? Hell, I might as well wash the clothes that I have on right now, too!_ You rolled your eyes at your utter lack of foresight. Well _there_ was another stop you’d need to make: the laundry room. As the sound of a squad of stormtroopers echoed toward you from down the corridor, you reconsidered. _Alright, maybe just to the room._ With the luck you’d had in the past week, they’d evacuate without you if you bothered to stop and pick up your clean clothes.

Another explosion rocked the base and you stopped walking, allowing a small puddle of water from your dripping hair to form around your feet. _Oh **shit** , the floor._ You swiveled around with a squeak of your sandals to see the squad stomping around the bend. “Watch out for the-!”

Sure enough, the first in line slipped and clattered to the floor, taking the second and third in line down with him. The troopers immediately behind the cluster of fallen squad-mates successfully stopped. However, _that_ only succeeded in leading those still rounding the bend into multiple subsequent collisions. _Bucketbrains. They’re like sentient dominoes._ You turned back and offered an apologetic shrug. Another explosion set the lights flickering and knocked a few pieces of paneling from the ceiling. _O-kay, time to go._

Moments later, another squad jogged past in the opposite direction. _More urgency in a jog than in a stomp...things must be getting intense upstairs._ You watched eight pairs of boots in near-lockstep approach the wet patches on the corridor floor, and were _just_ about to warn them when one of the stormtroopers--one of the first in line, in fact--made the mistake of opening his mouth.

“Hey there, nice outfit!”

Your lips said nothing; your look said ‘I will kill you with a screwdriver’. It did a wonderful job of curtailing the conversation. That remark ensured, you quickly decided, that he and his buddies would get to discover the slippery floor all on their own. Large-scale attack or no, the First Order had enough bucketheads on hand to spare a few to your enmity. 

The sound of armor plating against the floor brought a smile to your face. Your delight lasted long enough to get you back to your quarters without the need to pick a fight with anyone else (which was good, because the rest of the people that you passed all gave off that ‘I’m more important than you, and we both know it’ vibe). 

As you pulled your duffel bag out from beneath your bed and began shoving in handfuls of socks and underwear, you realized that the voice of the stormtrooper had sounded familiar. _Wow, was that Nat’s brother?_ You smirked, and decided you’d tell him about it later. After all, your little revenge plot probably held him up enough that he would never have the chance to test his piss-poor aim on live targets. Shirts and pants flew out of your dresser and into the bag next. _'Hey, Nat, did you know that I saved Torin’s life when the base got stormed by the Resistance? Yeah, yeah, it was great. I was very dashing.'_ You briefly hemmed and hawed over what else to take before giving up and sliding your arm across the top of the dresser, knocking everything on it into your bag in one fell swoop. _'Yeah, he might’ve gotten a bit bruised up along the way, and I think it’s possible that he hit his head at some point, but, hey, it’s not like he’s got much brain to lose anyway-' wait, I need clothes._ You dipped back into the bag and pulled out a heinously mismatched outfit. _That’ll do._

You pulled on one black sock, one red sock, a pair of light blue pajama pants printed to look like ship schematics, your work boots, a dark grey tee shirt, your work jacket, and a yellow knit hat, then zipped up the bag with a sharp tug. _Now, is that everything?_ Odds and ends littered the floor, but it looked like there was nothing there that you couldn’t replace. Another explosion knocked you into the doorframe. With no time for hard feelings (let alone toward inanimate objects), you righted yourself and slung the bag over your shoulder. A quick survey of your designated emergency exit route, and you were out of there. You left your room for the last time, careful to avoid the puddles in the hallway as you ran for the elevator.

\--------------------  
\--------------------

Why the First Order decided it was a good idea to assign personnel to emergency zones _nowhere near where they ever spent time on the base_ , you had no idea. Stupid as it looked, sitting in the elevator on the long ride up to Deck Seventeen proved wise, as the explosions grew more and more frequent the higher you climbed. When the car dinged pleasantly to indicate your arrival and the doors slid open to reveal that you were stuck between two floors, you bit the bullet and climbed out. Better for one to sweat a bit than plummet to one’s death, you figured as you squeezed on the safety rail at the end of the catwalk.

The intensity of the action on Deck Seventeen compared to Deck Two-B jumped straight from mild shenanigans to utter chaos on your ‘how much of an emergency is this, really?’ scale. Broken-up squads of stormtroopers, some containing higher-level and specialty soldiers, ran left and right, ducking in and out of corridors one after the other. Were they searching for something? Or some _one_?

You heard something from far upstairs, something familiar, then screams. Just as you looked up for the source, you caught a flicker of ruby red--but then something plummeted downward, something big, sending you to your knees as it passed. _Was that a **body**?_ “Holy shit...”

Well, Kylo Ren’s lightsaber was still fully operational, so there was that.

Zone Seventeen-B was deserted when you arrived, so you changed tactics and headed for Marsa and Nat’s, Zone Forty-Eight-C. (You’d memorized it after the first emergency scare as a backup location to head for in the case of calamity. Well, today was proving rather calamitous, so...) Rather than run the risk of a disaster in the elevator, you secured the strap of your bag across your chest and began to climb the system of emergency ladders.

It did not take long to discover that thirty-one ladders was a _lot of damned ladders._ You were winded after the first eight, and exhausted after fifteen. On Deck Thirty-Four, you abandoned the climbing idea entirely and got into another elevator. For once, luck was on your side; the ride to Deck Forty-Eight was uneventful, and it gave you a good chance to catch your breath, too. Still, you exited the car at a full sprint to minimize the chance of plummeting the the bottom level of the base like whoever it was that Angsty Knight had killed. No, you’d come this far; you’d make it.

Blaster fire. There was blaster fire on Deck Forty-Eight. You dropped to the floor. Based solely on the fact that the stormtroopers on this deck _weren’t_ aiming for you, you assumed that you’d get hit unless you got the hell out of the way. So you crawled on your belly into the nearest corridor, promptly making contact with two very different sets of shoes. You looked up. A man wearing a Resistance jacket and a girl in a sand-colored ensemble, both armed, both visibly shaken up, stared back. _Are these the rebels that’ve been giving The Order so much grief?_ The girl raised her blaster, squinting in concentration, but the man put a hand on her shoulder and she backed off. _Rebels **not** shooting at me? How pathetic must I look?_ Well, you _were_ slithering down the hall on your belly like some sort of Hutt-human hybrid... Okay, it made sense. “...Hello," you tried.

No response. _Rebels. Typical._

_I’m blocking their path, aren’t I?_ You rolled onto your side and propped up your head with your arm, elbow resting firmly on the floor. “Please, proceed. Elevator’s on the left, if you want to chance it.” They didn’t shoot you--neat!--and hurried past. You sat up, smacked the wrinkles out of your jacket and shirt, adjusted your bag, and came to a stand again. It appeared that badinage as a coping mechanism in life-threatening situations was swiftly becoming your M.O.

It took a while to get from Section B to Section C, what with all of the tangled corridors and constant need to avoid blasterfire. You half-hoped, half-expected that Nat and Marsa’s group would still be milling around when you arrived. It’s wasn’t like they’d try to send out ships full of engineering sector evacuees while the base was still getting attacked by Resistance ships. Ship mechanics, dining hall attendants, janitorial staff, and troops, sure, but not the Deck 2 engineers, because ha-HA, specialty engineers weren’t expendable. (You’d highlighted _that_ little tidbit in your work contract with pride.)

One long streak of ducking and weaving later, you arrived at the edge of Section C and started to wonder. How concerned would Marsa and Nat be about your safety? Would they be sitting on the floor side-by-side, rubbing at one another’s shoulders while they pleaded with each other to think happy thoughts? Wringing their hands in frustration at the fact that they didn’t take you along with them as they made the harrowing trip to Zone Forty-Eight-C? Praying to whoever or whatever it was they believed in to please, please just spare their friend?

Nope. They were snacking. Marsa pulled her hand out of a bag of what you guessed was granola and waved.

_Well, they’re still here, at least._ You waved back and fell in with the disturbingly small group of engineers gathered in the hallway to wait for evacuation orders. Nat furrowed his brows and gave you a once-over.

“Nice outfit.”

_That_ one, you deserved.

You brushed a wet lock of hair out of your face. “Why, hello.”

“Hiya,” Marsa chirped, mouth full of granola. “You’re just in time; they just told us that we’re out of here in two minutes.” She held out the bag and shook it in offering. You shook your head. She quickly retracted it and dipped her hand back in. “What’s with the hair?”

“Shower.” You squeezed a few more drops of water from the ends. “Although it’s probably fifty-fifty water and sweat at this point. The alarms started going off as soon-” You were cut off by the woman in charge of Zone Forty-Eight-C as she told everyone to start walking toward the emergency exit. The three of you fell into formation, and you continued your tale as you exited the Base, took a quick look at the carnage outside, and made a dash for the evac shuttle hovering a few feet above the snow. You took a quick head count once everyone was inside and flying off as far from Starkiller Base as possible. Only eighteen… There was definitely a bigger workload in store for everyone once you got to your new digs.

At this juncture, you thought it best to avoid the more stressful questions (the ‘what do we do now’ and ‘where do we live now’ and ‘do we still have jobs’ kind of questions), so you picked a more lighthearted topic. “So, uh…” you wondered aloud as blithely as you could. “Did anyone important die?”

“You mean Angsty Knight, right?” Marsa asked, crunching. “No, unfortunately. He and Hux are both _long_ gone.” Nat reached for the bag, and she handed it off, telling him to finish it as she brushed off her hands on her pants. You hummed acknowledgment and turned to the window.

You watched your home crumble away as the Resistance, ever unrelenting, bombarded the main supports again and again until they were little more than piles of rebar and gravel. Bits of ships and soldiers dotted the vast swaths of snow; more and more debris appeared with each subsequent round of bombing and retaliation. Eventually, the planet took over the task, splitting the forest into tree-filled islands with bottomless fissures in between until the planet cracked in two, eight, twelve, sixteen, smaller and smaller pieces until there was nothing left and the rest disappeared with more of a whimper than a bang.

You thought of the engineering wing, briefly. You thought of the perfectly cool temperature of the specialty tech department. You thought of the unfinished projects that were still tucked away in your repair cabinet, now completely annihilated (both the projects and the cabinet). You thought of all of the reorganization you’d have to do after getting settled in. You thought of all of the tool cabinets you’d have to drag around to wall off a section of the new shop. You thought of the tools you’d have to replace. You sighed, and reached up to toy with the elastic band behind your ear. At least you still had your gog-

DAMN IT, YOU FORGOT YOUR GOGGLES.


	4. Chapter IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The First Order was hurting, that was for sure, but it hadn’t met its end. Not by a long shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was brought to you by an entire pot of tea consumed in a forty-five minute span.

\--------------------  
\--------------------  
The new base was….well, it could have been much worse. You’d been promised by what remained of the Establishment that living conditions were only temporary, and that new construction would commence as soon as replacement personnel and building materials arrived...from the other end of the galaxy...one tiny ship at a time. The Finalizer was gone, but Hux remained, as did Phasma, a few thousand stormtroopers, some medical staff, some communication staff, a few hundred various other personnel, the Knights of Ren, and Supreme Leader Snoke (somewhere). Hell, there weren’t even too many serious injuries; most of the people that had been _that_ unlucky back at the Base had met their ends there. All things considered, the situation was pretty okay.

You didn’t even know which planet you were on, only that it exhibited the worst of a desert planet and the best of an ice planet: sand, sun, snow, and constant cold weather. It wasn’t quite tundra, but wasn’t far off. Trees were few and far between. Most of the land’s defining features were made of time-sculpted rock. The planet had been one of seventeen pre-screened by the Order as a possible location for a second base, and was randomly selected as soon as the first proton bomb fell on Starkiller. By the time you'd arrived, many of the ships had already been strategically parked in a conveniently massive cave, with others peppered around its mouth. Even after losing most of the fleet, you still had dozens of A.A.L.’s and TIE fighters, a Dissident-class light cruiser, and a few command shuttles. 

The First Order was hurting, that was for sure, but it hadn’t met its end. Not by a long shot.

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\--------------------

You’d landed on the planet in the throes of a blizzard (which you would soon come to learn were extremely frequent), and were quickly shepherded to a makeshift central hall in the middle of the new site. A fierce wind shrieked through the gaps in the large metal room, and people were crammed in to the point that you couldn’t move your arms. It didn’t take long to lose Marsa and Nat. You resolved to find them later as you headed for the nearest wall. Upon inspection, you realized that the walls and ceiling were constructed of battered pieces of ships. _So we’re stripping for parts already. That doesn’t bode well._ You learned after exchanging a few words with an intense woman in a torn suit that everyone was being sent through the ‘temporary command center’ so that they could take a headcount of all remaining members of the First Order. You also learned that the jumbled mess of people filling the room to the brim was supposed to be a line. 

When you got to the front of the line (hours later), you provided your name and identification number as everyone else had. A ration packet was thrust into your hand, and you were given a quick medical evaluation and directions to your bunk before being sent on your way. You nodded and headed for the exit, pausing just outside the door (if you could call it that; it was little more than a few jackets poorly sewn together) to pocket the ration pack, zip your jacket, straighten your hat, and pull your hands into your sleeves.

Only after you had exited the ‘command center’--oh, who were you kidding, large shack in the middle of the new base--did it dawn on you that they were probably using the ships as temporary quarters, and that you’d have to sleep in a ship with _other people_. Rather than face that grim fate head on, you pressed through the snowy gale in search of a workshop. As large flakes flew into your eyes, you couldn’t help but think of your beloved goggles. _Why, oh why must the good die young? They were younglings, only a few years old!_

You crashed into countless stormtroopers in their _damned invisible white armor_ as you trudged along, taking in the paltry stacks of supply crates and occasional groups of soldiers working on building other shacks. As you expected, some of the larger ships were being used as barracks. You paused in front of a cluster of A.A.L.’s to watch groups of _way_ too many personnel filter in for what you could only assume was a much needed restorative nap. It took all that you had left to keep from turning up your nose at the well-meaning flametrooper who stopped and offered to help you find your bunk. 

You shook your head. “No, thanks. I’m alright.”

“Okay… You should get some rest, ma’am.”

“Uh-huh. Hey, is there a workshop around here? I’m an engineer.”

“Up ahead, on your left, ma’am.”

As you watched him go, you realized that you were being far too persnickety about the whole sleeping situation. However, you were nearly at the workshop now, and giving up seemed like a waste. Just as the flametrooper had said, a few ships reserved for use as workshops appeared on your left. You ducked into the first one and found it empty. _Perfect._

It wasn’t quiet or warm, but it was unoccupied, and that was good enough for you. You kept your jacket on, but took off your hat and boots to let them dry. You sat down in a dark far corner and ripped open the ration pack to get at the energy bar that was invariably inside. As expected, alongside a napkin, beverage pouch, and some mints, there it was. You slid it out and flipped it over to read the label. _‘Savory flavor’... Not my favorite, but I can deal with it._ You pulled open the wrapper and bit down into the pliable brick. Chewing thoughtfully, you pulled your duffel bag across the floor so that it sat in front of you, then swallowed. “That’s savory, all right.”

You took another bite and unzipped the bag. _Best to find out what I actually brought with me, I guess._ Thankfully, you’d actually piled in a nice assortment of clothes in your slapdash packing session. _Gloves, hats, my scarf...alright, not bad._ You took everything out in one big armful and set it in a messy pile at your feet. At the very bottom of your bag, you were pleasantly surprised to find your speaker. “Perfect.” You promptly turned it on and sorted and folded everything with a bit of musical accompaniment. It really worked wonders for your mood; by the time you were done, you had a smile on your face for the first time that day.

Deciding that you’d be hard pressed to get any more relaxed than you already were, you left the energy bar half-finished and reclined onto on a bed made of stacks of folded shirts. _After all, who knows when I’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep again?_ You turned down your music so that the wind could lull you to sleep and closed your eyes.

“Good evening. May I be of any assistance?”

You opened one eye. It was a droid. An extremely tall droid (you figured eight or more feet, maybe nine). “Good evening...” You sat up. “Have you been in here this entire time?”

“Yes.”

 _Wow, **really**? I must be more tired than I thought._ “I see.” You stood up in an attempt to lessen the height gap. It didn’t help much. “I also see that you have a brushed titanium finish. Nice. That’s my favorite.”

“It is my most preferred finish as well.”

You pulled a Marsa and hopped up to sit on a nearby shelf. “What should I call you?”

“You may refer to me as X-323. Many prefer to use Exthree or Ex, however. I am a Class Two Engineering Droid equipped with additional verbal communication software. It is my pleasure to assist you with any engineering-related tasks.”

You nodded thoughtfully. “In that case, it is a pleasure to meet you X-323. I am an engineer, and expect that I will often find myself in need of your assistance.”

You spent the next hour or so learning about Exthree (who you discovered was a local), and Exthree about you. You also convinced him (he had masculine programming, and you had always felt awkward about using ‘it’ for droids) to speak in more concise terms when they seemed appropriate. Formalities were nice, you said, but, in your experience, soon grew tedious. For all of your experience with engineering, you’d never actually had a conversation of any substance with a droid. The whole talk was quite pleasant, doubly so because you realized that you could chat with Exthree instead of other people when you felt like socializing.

“Well, Exthree," you said with a stretch. "This has been a wonderful conversation, but I’m really quite exhausted. Would you mind waking me in six hours?”

“Certainly. Sleep.”

You assumed that he’d taken your ‘please, be as concise as you like’ a bit too literally and dropped the ‘well’ from ‘sleep well’. No matter; he was still better than ninety-five percent of the people you worked with. He walked to the other end of the room, ducking under support beams all the way, and you retook your place atop your bed of folded shirts.

“Good night, Exthree.”

“Sunrise occurred seven minutes and twenty-two seconds ago.”

“Good morning, Exthree.”

“Yes.”

\--------------------  
\--------------------

“Your assistance with a repair has been requested. I attempted to inform the stormtrooper bearing the lightsaber that I was more than capable of completing it myself, but my offer was rejected.”

You yawned and rolled over. For as thin as it was, the bed of shirts was quite comfortable. “How many hours has it been?”

“Three hours and forty-seven minutes have passed.”

You yawned again. “Thank you. Is the saber-bearer still here?”

“Yes. He is standing on the threshold of the main doorway.”

You stood up and gave Exthree a quick nod of thanks before jogging over to the door in your socks. A few feet from the threshold, you stopped jogging and slid the rest of the way there. A lone stormtrooper stood in the entryway holding Kylo Ren’s saber at his side. _No box this time?_ “Hello, saber-bearer. I’ll take that.” You held your hand out and the stormtrooper deposited the _extremely cold, **wow**_ hilt firmly in your palm. “Do you know what’s wrong with it? Oh, wait, never mind.” You turned back toward your makeshift bed, where your droid pal was still standing. “X-323!” You shook the hilt a bit, then tossed it across the room. “What’s wrong with this?” Exthree caught it easily. 

“There is dried blood on this," he said.

“I know.” You turned back to the stormtrooper (who, past the expressionless helmet, you assumed was aghast). “Thanks. So long.”

“Goodbye.” He turned to leave, letting the door slide shut behind him.

“Oh- wait!” You leaned forward, sending it sliding open again. 

He looked back over his shoulder. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Where is he? Angsty Kni- sorry, Kylo Ren?”

“The med bay, ma’am.”

 _Really? Do tell._ “Which is…?” You twirled your hand through the air in a ‘go on’ gesture.

“Straight across the base, ma’am.”

“Alright, thank you.” Now it was your turn to let the door close behind you. _Let’s see what Angsty Knight did to it this time…_ You slid back toward Exthree, stopping yourself with a built-in table. “Exthree, please report.”

X-323’s diagnostic report contained seventy-three errors in construction or function with Kylo Ren’s lightsaber, but you honed in on ‘misaligned secondary focusing crystal’. You sighed. “Again?”

“Again? Certainly. Upon inspection, I was able to find seventy-three errors in construction or function-”

You held up a hand to stop him. “My apologies, Exthree, I was talking to myself." You sighed in exasperation. "I repaired that secondary focusing crystal not even a week ago, and I know for a fact that I fixed the problem completely.”

“It appears to have resurfaced.”

“Yeah, it would appear so.” You crossed your arms and leaned into the table. “Exthree, do you have soldering instrumentation?”

He straightened a bit, almost pridefully. “Of course.”

You rubbed your hands together and went to your bag for the couple of tools you’d been fortunate enough to throw in back at Starkiller. “Well, then, let’s get to work.”

\--------------------  
\--------------------

Having a droid work partner was fantastic. Between the two of you, you solved seventy-two of the seventy-three problems in four hours. Four hours! The seventy-third problem was essentially unresolvable: Ren had been so forceful (no pun intended, ha ha) when he corrupted the Kyber crystal that he’d cracked it. You couldn’t fix it with what you had on hand, so you did the next best thing: you worked with Exthree to design a series of lenses to compensate for the crystal’s instability and get rid of the blade's crackling problem.

After a few moments spent teaching Exthree how to participate in a celebratory high-five, you left for the med bay with the saber in your pocket. 

The storm had cleared, but it left behind a hefty foot or so of snow. Finally, _finally_ , you had the chance to be out in the snow. _My time has come_ you thought, broad smile brightening your face. _At long last!_ After a few minutes of tromping through snowdrifts, you even started whistling. Even after you tripped on a rock hidden deep beneath the sparkly white blanket and lost the saber in a snowbank for a solid fifteen minutes, you were _still_ in a decent mood. When you accidentally turned on the saber while it was stuck in the snow and gave yourself a heart attack, however, your mood promptly evened out. Fun in the snow was over; you were back to normal. Twenty minutes later, you arrived at the med bay.

You stepped into quite a scene. Med staff, human and droid alike, scurried all over the place, heading into and out of surgery, checking on patients, and tossing bandages and medications to and fro. Despite the fact that you sported a thick coating of snow, you doubted that anyone noticed you were there. After loudly clearing your throat went unnoticed not once, but _twice_ , you stepped forward to ask a frazzled nurse where to find the Knight of Ren in question.

Her eyes widened and she dropped a roll of gauze. “What? Why? Is he out again?”

 _Out...again?_ You ignored the question and put on your best friendly face. “No, no, I just have something to give him.” You waved her closer and pulled open your pocket to show her your precious cargo.

You thought that her eyes couldn’t get any wider. You were wrong. “You- you should keep that. He needs to rest.”

You nodded (skeptically). “Uh-huh. What’s your name?”

“Joni.”

“Joni.” You smiled. “See, I completely understand what you’re saying, but I’d rather not get killed for not giving it back. So.” You clasped your hands together in front of your chest. “Would you prefer to tell me where Kylo Ren is, Joni, or to be held culpable for actively preventing me from returning his lightsaber to him?”

Joni pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long, panicky breath. “He’s the room in the far right corner. There are guards outside. Can't miss it.”

“Thanks, Joni. Have a _great_ day.” You waved goodbye and walked over to Kylo Ren’s hospital room like you owned the place. As she had described, there were four guards outside. _Four. Damn. He usually only has two._ “Hello. I’m finished with the repair.” You flashed the saber. The four of them glanced back and forth at each other as though they were wordlessly deciding who’d be the first to jump off a cliff. Finally, the one furthest from you spoke up.

“Why don’t you hand-deliver it?” You raised an eyebrow at him. “Seeing as you were the one to complete the repair.” His companions nodded and muttered in agreement.

 _Okay…_ “Alright.” They stepped aside to let you in. _I’ve cheated death at least forty-nine times this week. Might as well make it an even fifty._ You paused before entering to remove your boots (it’d be quieter, you explained to the guards) and set them down next to the door before shuffling in.

His mask was off--his mask was _OFF_?--and one side of his face was covered with bandages and salve. He wasn’t moving, though, nor was he making an effort to kill you, so you stepped forward, saber in hand, keeping an eye on him as you inched closer to the bedside table. Despite many childhood hours spent observing operations at the office of your surgeon mother, the wound was completely unfamiliar to you. It looked like it had been cauterized, but no medical laser was that sloppy... Oh. _Oh._ It was a lightsaber wound. The side of his face that _wasn’t_ seared like a steak was that of someone much younger than you expected. And...freckled. And...actually...kind of nice to….look…at--was what you _would_ have thought if you weren’t _entirely_ focused on the task at hand. He looked like he was sleeping, but you’d gotten people to leave you alone by pretending to sleep one too many times to believe it. You glanced at the IV bag hanging from the stand on the other side of the bed. _Heavy sedatives, huh? He **could** be asleep..._

Eventually, you arrived at the table. His breathing sounded almost too measured to be genuine. Shaking _just_ a bit, you set down the lightsaber as quietly as possible. You took another minute to adjust the hilt so that it couldn’t possibly roll off the table, then silently spun around on the soles of your socks and began the slow creep to the door.

“Stop.” 

You did. 

_So he **wasn’t** asleep! I knew it._ “Yes?” you asked, barely above a whisper as you turned around. He lifted his head ever-so-slightly, trying to get a look at your terrified expression, it seemed. It looked like the gesture, minute as it was, took all that he had.

“They have...attempted to...immobilize me...with narcotics,” he mumbled. “Remove this IV tube.”

You thought about endangering everyone in the med bay, you really did. You _also_ thought about how a gesture like this just might put you in better standing with the guy who nearly killed you for falling asleep at your workstation after you'd fixed his lightsaber in record time. Eager not to dally, you run-slid back across the room. “Right away, sir.” 

You stopped yourself next to the IV stand, and he tilted his head in your direction while you busied yourself with the tubing. _Ripping the lead out would be too suspicious...what about-_

“Your socks...“ You glanced back at him; it seemed that keeping his eyes open proved a tremendous task.

You abandoned the formal attitude. _Like he’s going to remember any of this._ “Yeah, I dyed them myself.” _Now, how can I make it less obvious? There **has** to be a way._

“Red,” he said.

“Yeah, red. Look, if I just take the lead out, they’ll be able to tell, but if I just turn the stopcock-” _**Why** is my face getting warm? That’s **what it’s called**._ You cleared your throat. “If I turn this to the off position, you’ll still have the needle in your arm, but you won’t be getting any of the medicine. It’ll take a few hours to wear off, and it’ll probably start to hurt.”

“Good.”

 _Okay, edgelord._ “Okay, then.” You turned the knob, made sure that the drip wasn’t delivering any more of whatever cocktail of sarlacc tranquilizers they had him under, then started to beat a hasty retreat. Halfway across the room, you stopped. His head was still tilted toward where you had been. “Your lightsaber is on the table, sir. It’s fixed. Bye.”

“...Bye.”


	5. Chapter V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm-back-for-my-spring-semester-so-this-chapter-took-a-really-kriffing-long-time-to-post edition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beepy~dee~beep.

\--------------------  
\--------------------

A gust of snow followed you in when you returned to the workshop. X-323 turned from a nearby console to assess the melting mess and you gave him an apologetic shrug. Doing your best to minimize the puddling, you brushed off as much of the snow stuck to your clothes as you could before tugging your wet boots off and setting them down just outside of the shop floor.

“Good afternoon,” Exthree said.

You stared him dead in the photoreceptors. “ _Is_ it?”

“Yes. There is minimal wind, allowing for five thousand and twelve-meter visibility, and all personnel have been counted and assigned quarters. Eighty-seven percent of individuals have described similar afternoons as quote, unquote, good.”

“Alright, then, pal,” you replied with a sigh as you started shuffling across the shop in your damp socks. “A taxing afternoon is what it is.” You traipsed back and forth from work table to work table before giving up and heading over to your personal articles. “I basically just broke the number one rule for medical patients, Exthree, and for what, kudos? Brownie points?” You ripped your hat off and raked your hands through your static-y hair. “Force, what have I done?”

X-323 stepped out from behind the command console (to provide a more ‘professional’ response, you guessed). “Well, from what you have described, it sounds as though you have just committed a severe breach of protocol.”

You turned from your duffel bag and shot him finger-blasters. “Bingo. And, hey, who knows, I might even get killed for it.” You turned back to your bag and began rooting around for something to remedy the existential crisis you felt coming on. Even though it was nearly empty, you still had quite a few bits and pieces floating around at the bottom in a very disorganized pile. “I doubt normal disciplinary procedures apply; we’re kind of in the wildlands out here, you know?”

“On the contrary, many planets in this sector feature far less development-”

Your fingertips connected with their intended target and you grinned. “A- _ha_!” As X-323 fell silent, appearing almost offended by the interruption, you flew to your feet in search of a mug and a rehydrator. It didn’t take long to find your target; it used to be a crew transporter, after all. It was a bit stripped out to make room for tools and parts, but the basic layout was the same.

You tossed the pod from hand to hand, childish smile still plastered to your face. “Sorry to interrupt, Exthree, but this is an extremely important matter. I didn’t even know if this made it out of the base until _just_ now.” 

“It is no trouble,” X-323 said. “I do not care in the slightest.” (And yet, somehow, his response sounded just a bit snippier than average.)

You clipped the silver beverage pod into the drink machine and spent thirty seconds waiting very eagerly for it to _finish up, come **on** already_. Finally, it beeped and began dispensing the ultimate pick-me-up: hot chocolate. You inhaled deeply. The smell alone was enough to cause your shoulders to drop in pure relaxation.

The moment the last drop left the dispenser and plinked into mug, you took hold of the pure-bliss-in-a-beverage, wrapping both hands around it to let the warmth soak into your palms. X-323 tracked you as you walked around in a little circle of happiness, looking quizzical. “Excuse me, that beverage is not allowed in First Order territory.”

You removed one hand from the mug and waved him off. “Yes, because Emperor Palpatine hated it back in the day and we all think that fun is stupid, I know, I know. Just wait.” After a few seconds of careful blowing across the surface to bring it to _just_ below scalding, you tilted the mug back and took the smallest of sips. It was enough to make you shudder in contentment. 

_Sweet, sweet contraband._

“Wow,” you said after another tiny sip. “ _Wow_.” You set down the mug on your workstation and strode back to your bag. “I have to take an inventory. I need to know how I should ration these.” You knelt down next to the duffel and overturned it, letting everything spill out onto the floor. “It should go without saying that you may speak of this to no one, Exthree.”

“I am required to inform any official who requests information about the presence of illegal substances or conduction of illicit activities about its presence,” he replied.

You sighed and placed your hands on your hips. “Are we friends, Exthree?”

“The concept of friendship is a creation of organic lifeforms.”

Okay, let’s try again. “Are we work associates, Exthree?” You turned back to the pile on the floor and begin separating the pods from everything else. _Two, four, five..._

“Affirmative.”

_Seven, eight, eleven… only eleven. So they’ll be for special occasions._ You slid them into a triangle shape on the floor. “Trust between work associates increases productivity.” You paused and turned back to Exthree. “Collaboration begets fast results.”

“Affirmative.”

“Well, then,” you said as you stood up to set the pods on a nearby shelf _not at all like a shrine to hot chocolate or anything_. “Can I trust you to keep my hot chocolate secret, X-323? Or can I at least trust you to misdirect anyone who may come into this shop about its presence?”

“...Affirmative.”

“Excellent.”

The door hissed open and you pulled your hands from the shelf to stick them into your pockets. You gave the room a last-minute check. _Oh **hell** , the mug._ With a clumsy twirl-and-slide maneuver, you positioned yourself directly in front of it, hoping that the steam billowing up to the ceiling from behind you would go ignored.

It was Marsa.

“There are no illegal beverages in this workstation,” Exthree said.

_Wow, **nice going** , Ex._

\--------------------  
\--------------------

“So,” Marsa loudly posed as she began peeling off layers of outerwear. “Where the _hell_ have you been?”

You took a slow glance around the room. “Here, I guess.”

“You guess?” She smirked. As she stepped further into the room, noticing the half-assembled pieces of tech splayed across most of the tables and shelves in the room, she let out a whistle of disbelief. “Wow, they have you assigned to fix _all this_ by yourself?”

“No, this is all self-motivated.” Exthree had thoroughly blown your cover for the hot chocolate, so you paused to reach back for the mug. “I’d just rather be making jobs for myself than working at whatever overcrowded station they have the other engineers at,” you added after a sip. Marsa quirked an eyebrow and tilted her chin up in the direction of the mug, silently questioning its contents in one smooth gesture. “Hot chocolate. You know me; I'm a beverage maverick.” You took another sip.

She leaned into the countertop containing the rehydrator and crossed her arms. “Uh-huh. Well, you avoiding the idiotic masses in here makes enough sense. And I see you’ve gotten yourself a wrench-jockey, too,” she added, nodding at Exthree.

You stiffened slightly. “Whoa, he is _not a-”_

“I am not a-” Exthree simultaneously retorted from the other end of the table. 

Marsa laughed and apologetically raised both hands in front of her chest. “Sorry, sorry, _engineering droid_.” She smirked and re-crossed her arms. Well, at any rate, looks like you two’ve become fast friends, huh?” 

“We are work associates,” X-323 explained. “The concept of friendship is a creation of organic lifeforms." You noticed that he’d changed his tone a bit when speaking with Marsa. It was just high-pitched enough, just lilting enough, just _patronizing_ enough to make you hide your smirk within your mug. 

“Yeah, well, anyway,” Marsa said with a roll of her eyes. “I came in to give you a ‘normal people’ life update. Basically, work sucks, the showers are freezing, and Nat’s brother’s dead.” 

A few hairs fell in front of your face as you tilted your head in acknowledgement. _Nat’s brother...the one that told me ‘nice outfit’ back at the base? Oh, what a **major** loss._ After noticing that Marsa was waiting for some kind of reply, you pursed your lips and gave a solemn nod. “Bummer,” you said. 

“Uh, yeah, just a word of advice for ya' here: don’t say that to Nat.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Gee, thanks, wouldn’t’ve known that, Marsa.” 

“Force, _some_ -one’s snippy.” 

“Well, it’s _obviously_ inconsiderate right? I mean, come on, the death of a brother? That’s obviously worthy of a ‘major bummer’.”

She smirked again, more genuinely this time, and put a hand on your shoulder. “Come on, let’s go meet up with him. You haven’t been out of here at all, have you?” 

_Now, should I tell her about the saber…?_ Visions of a soon-to-be-destroyed med bay danced through your head. _Yeah, probably not._ “Nope, haven’t been out.” 

“On the contrary-” Exthree began. You shot him a look and he fell silent. Marsa didn’t seem to notice. 

“Then you definitely need to come with me. Grab your stuff and we’ll go get something to eat.” She released your shoulder from her grip, gave your earlobe a playful flick, and started out for the entrance. "Let's get a move on." 

You nodded and reached for the mug again, this time to seal it so that the rest of its contents could be saved for later. After pulling on a coat, a hat, a scarf, and a pair of gloves, you followed her out. 

\--------------------  
\-------------------- 

After a pleasant few hours of time-wasting conversation with Marsa and Nat, you returned to the shop, drop-dead exhausted. You took a long look at the pile of tech paraphernalia, exhaled slowly through your nose, let your shoulders drop, and set out to make a triple-strength serving of stim tea. Once you’d polished that off, you made another, then a third. Your heart started thrumming furiously against the wall of your chest, so you decided that you wouldn’t be making a fourth. 

"No rest for the weary, eh, Exthree?” you called out to the droid, holding up the newly-refilled mug. 

“I do not rest.” 

“Touché.” You laughed humorlessly and brought the mug to your lips. Once it was about a third empty, you set it down alongside a swath of wire clippings and screws. _Okay, time to get to work on this._ “Hey, Exthree, do we have a laser milling chuck in here?” 

“Yes. Would you like for me to bring it to you?” 

“Yes, please.” You took a fistful of drill bits from a storage bin and began sorting out the correct sizes. _Stupid time-wasting best friends of mine...keeping me from doing all of these boring repairs. At least the food was better than the protein bars, though. I didn’t realize that we’d brought any-_ “Oh. Thanks, Exthree.” You pulled yourself away from your thoughts to receive the part. 

He nodded and returned to his own station, where stacks of circuit boards sat ready for functionality checks. 

“I~want~to~die~” you sing-songed to the fourth of five broken laser rifle scopes. Finished taking inventory, you zoned out for a moment. When you caught yourself and refocused your gaze, you realized you were staring directly at the resealed hot chocolate mug. _That’ll be the reward for a job well done, I guess._ “But~at~least~there’s~hot~chocolate~at~the~end~of~the~tunnel~” 

If you’d been looking at X-323 at the time, his posture indicated moderate concern for your wellbeing. 

“Only~seventeen~million~things~to~do~” You reached for a laser etcher. “Then~I’m~sleeping~for~three~kriffing~years~” After pulling on a pair of (terrible, ill-fitting) protective goggles, you activated the etcher and dug into the surface of a semiconductor. “Hey, Exthree, would you be so kind as to retrieve the speaker from next to my bed of shirts?” 

He stepped away from his table yet again. “Certainly. However, I would recommend doing anything possible to maintain concentration in your current state. Musical accompaniment does not seem appropriate.” 

“No, the music will keep me awake. Promise. See, droids don’t need to take final exams and write theses, but I’ve done this before.” You stuck your hand out for your tea mug, brought it swiftly to your face, and took a large gulp. “I’m an expert.” When you set it back down, a moderate amount splashed out onto a pile of parts and you panicked a little bit. 

“I cannot possibly see how.” 

“What do you mean, Exthree?” you replied, furiously wiping down the scopes that the tea spilled onto with your shirtsleeve. “I’m thriving.” 

“So you say.” He handed you the speaker with a long look. 

You laughed. “Thanks.” It took a bit of flipping around, but you soon found some saccharine electronica similar to what always played in the bar one of your friends regularly took you to during grad school. You figured that it’d keep you annoyed enough to stave off sleep. To your moderate surprise, you were tapping your foot to the beat just a few songs in. _Well, that works, too, I guess._

You very nearly drilled a hole into your hand when a familiar lightsaber dropped onto your worktable with a clang. 

“ _ **What**_ did you do to it?” he snapped. 

It took a little while to swallow the yell perched at the back of your throat, but, motivated by the knowledge of how your impromptu guest might react to it, you managed. With a resigned half-smile, you deactivated the drill and looked up at his featureless helmet. He was trying so hard to act like he was fine, but you could tell that he wasn’t leaning on the table to be domineering; he was leaning on it for support. After all, it had only been a few hours since you’d last spoken in his medcenter room (if he even remembered that). Powerful though he was, Kylo Ren was still a human, and humans needed time to heal. 

A chorus of ‘beepy~dee~beep!~beep~buh~dee~beep’ filled in the terrifying silence. You found it hilarious. 

“This music is excessively cheerful.” 

_Well, hello to you, too._ “Oh, my apologies. Would you like me to put on a bit of death metal to darken the mood?” 

Silence. 

(Well, more ‘beepy~dee~beep,’ actually.) 

“I realize that was out of line.” 

“ _ **What**_ did you do to it?” he repeated. This one was less of a snap and more of a simmering hatred-fueled inquiry. 

“What did I do to wha- oh, the saber? I fixed it.” (In hindsight, your reply was a bit low on tact, but you were low on sleep, high on stim tea, and strapped for good judgment at the time.) _How did he get in here without Exthree telling me?_ You brushed a few strands of hair out of your face and took a quick look around to make sure that your droid buddy hadn’t been ‘decommissioned’. Unfortunately, he was nowhere to be found. _Oh dear. That doesn't bode well, does it?_ When Ren slammed his gloved hand on the table, you abruptly spun back around. “Hm? Yes, what?” 

“What did you **do to it**? It’s burning _far_ too cleanly.” 

You leaned back in your seat, nodding. “I hope so, sir. Exthree and I spent a good two and a half hours on that.” 

Had Ren not been exhausted himself, he probably would have killed you. In his fragile state, however, he was only able to crush your windpipe about three quarters as much as he had the first time you’d had a conversation. That being the case, you were able to slowly straighten up and talk back. To a casual onlooker, you probably looked like two Fenner’s Rocks fighting; you were both trying your hardest, but neither one of you was getting anywhere. 

”Yeah, Exthree saw that your Kyber crystal was cracked and we compensated for it with a few extra lenses. Uh…” Unable to turn your head, you fought his invisible grip and reached across the table to feel for the saber. You tapped your fingertips back and forth, testing for the hilt, and successfully grabbed it after rolling it just a bit closer. “Here.” You raised your arm as high as you could and brought the hilt down against the edge of the table in one fluid motion. Ren shoulders visibly tightened beneath his dark cloak. 

_Okay, now **there’s** a burst of full-strength force choking._ Luckily, the impassioned power amplification didn’t last. You took a couple of hacking coughs, but soon countered. 

Your voice was gravelly. “I don’t need to be harangued right now, okay? I think I’ve slept three hours in two days. We can skip the haranguing. Try it.” 

He released his hold and took a moment to catch his own breath for a change. “Try what?” 

You rolled your eyes. _Sithspit, it’s like talking to an angsty wall._ “The lightsaber, sir, the lightsaber.” 

He grabbed it from the table and it roared to life, back to its old crackly self. As you expected it would, the whack had knocked the secondary focusing crystal out of place yet again. “It might come as a surprise, but I do know what I’m doing every once in a while.” 

He did not reply. You slowly reached across the table to turn off your speaker. 

“So, uh, how’s your face?” 

“ _What_?” Normally, you’d have recognized that ‘what’ actually meant ‘how dare you, you low-level imbecile’. However, given the circumstances, it went over your head. 

“The, uh-” You traced a line across your face. “Your little mishap. You should let it breathe; it’ll heal faster.” 

He slid the lightsaber into his holster and slowly crossed his arms. 

“Yeah, I got myself in the knee with a laser etcher a few years ago. Being a laser etcher, it cauterized it right away, of course, but they put some gel on it when I got to a medcenter so that the scarring wouldn’t get too bad.” You pulled up the right leg of your trousers, revealing a faint scar across the front of your knee. “The gel and letting it air out was what made it heal so well, they said, and I can’t imagine that you get very good ventilation in there,” you said, tapping at the side of your head. You looked back up at him. He hadn’t moved. _What was the other thing I wanted to say… What was it, what was it, what- Oh!_

You left your trouser leg hiked up and twisted around in your chair. “Oh, and you didn’t kill anyone when you left the medcenter, did you? I don’t want to get called out for that. Not really good for a CV,” you explained with a flick of your wrist. 

You wouldn’t have believed it in a normal state, but you definitely didn’t believe it now. From beneath his helmet, Kylo Ren laughed.  
.  
.  
.  
Or maybe he coughed.


	6. Chapter VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The First Order really seems to have a problem with keeping their lenses aligned.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, a pretty long chapter suddenly appeared after way too long.

\--------------------  
\--------------------

“Are you the optical engineer?”

“Hmm-what?” You picked your head up from the tabletop, and a screwdriver fell off of where it had adhered to your forehead. “Yes...uh, yeah. What do you need?” Eyes not yet adjusted to the light, you squinted at the screwdriver, then at the immaculate white helmet worn by your interrogator, then back at the screwdriver. You ran your fingertips across your forehead; sure enough, there was a pretty prominent indentation all the way across it. _Did that **really** just happen? **Super** professional._ “Give me the details,” you said with a yawn, fervently rubbing at the indentation in a feeble attempt to smooth it out.

The stormtrooper corrected his posture and began his report. “The command center is ready. The projector’s been installed, but needs a repair. It’s something with one of the focusing lenses, I’ve been told. A meeting has been arranged to take place in three hours, so the repair must be completed by then.”

You nodded and slid out of your seat. _So it’s **this** again. Better than fixing that blasted lightsaber, at least._ “Alright… I suppose we should get a move on.” As you stuck your right arm into the sleeve of your jacket, you removed a single multi-tool from the worktable and jammed it into your pocket with your left hand. You stuck your left arm into the jacket and shrugged it the rest of the way on as you turned back to the stormtrooper; he had sauntered over to your personal area, and was staring at your shrine of hot chocolate pods. “Now, I know the location of exactly one thing at this base, that thing being this workshop, so feel free to lead the way.”

“Is this hot chocolate?” he asked as he plucked one of the pods from the shelf and began a thorough examination.

You shot him a look. _You **can** read, can’t you, laserbrain?_ “No. No, it’s not. Let's go.” 

He set the pod back on the shelf and made for the exit. After zipping your jacket up to your chin, you paused beside him in front of the door. It hissed and slid open. You stepped out of the workshop side by side, but you stopped walking almost immediately. _Huh._ “It’s dark outside.”

He turned his head a bit to reply; the edge of his helmet knocked into the ‘shoulder strap’ portion of his chestpiece and made a pleasant hollow sound. “Uh…” he replied. “Yes.”

“Well, stars,” you said, rubbing at your forehead to get rid of the last of the screwdriver mark. “What time is it?”

“Twenty-two hundred hours. Standard Galactic Time, that is. Turn left here.”

So you’d slept for a solid day and a half. Well, huh. At least you felt rested. “What’s your name?” you asked for no particular reason beyond the fact that you were well-rested and, therefore, slightly more willing to socialize.

“FN-2894. Turn right up ahead.”

You politely looked away to roll your eyes. _Why do I even bother?_ As you walked through the base to whichever destination ‘FN-2894’ had been assigned to escort you to, you noted the surprising lack of snow. Shortly thereafter, you noted the more surprising warmth of the air itself. You removed your jacket and slung it over your shoulder. “Since when did it get this warm?”

“This morning. Scientists say that the weather goes through a warm to cold cycle. Next few days should be hot.”

 _Damn._ “Really?” You frowned. “That’s unfortunate.”

He readjusted his grip on his blaster and shrugged. “I guess so. Not really hot chocolate weather, is it?”

"Oh, don't even try me, FN-2894."

You continued on without any further remarks, but your inner commentary kicked into high gear. _So it’s twenty-two hundred. Didn’t he just say there was a Command meeting in three hours? Why would they arrange a meeting for zero one hundred hours? I mean, I suppose it makes sense if some of the other officials are operating in a completely different time zone, but still, zero one hundred hours? That’s a bit much-_

“Excuse me. Turn right. No, _right._ Hey-” He waved a gloved hand in front of your face.

“Oh, sorry, my apologies.” _That’s definitely a bit much. They can pick a more mutually convenient time of day. It’s not like anyone’s orbiting a black hole; there’s no time dilation to account for..._

“The Command Center’s up ahead.”

“Alright, thanks.” You watched your boots leave soggy prints in the sand. The ground was entirely saturated with melted snow. _Maybe it’s some sort of covert conversation. I mean, the Resistance probably thinks that we were completely wiped out. Like they’d ever think to check, lazy scoundrels that they are. They probably just assumed that because the base was blown up-_

“We’re here.”

“Oh. Alright. Thanks, FN-2894.” (For as silly as the stormtrooper ID-codes-instead-of-names thing was, you did have a knack for remembering them.)

“You’re welcome. Good luck on the repair.” He turned away to head for another area of the base, leaving you in front of a command shuttle. 

_Command shuttle for a command center...makes sense._ You swiped at the entryway panel and ducked inside as soon as the opening was tall enough to accommodate your height.

\--------------------  
\--------------------

Even though the meeting wasn’t scheduled to take place for another two and three-quarters hours, the center was already abuzz. The important people in the room hovered impatiently while the comms team struggled to get everyone connected. Just in front of you, a woman with close-cropped hair dictated adjustments from her data read-out so that the techs could fiddle appropriately.

“Signal location systems are nominal. We should still be able to get through, though... Jensen, tilt the dish two point seven three degrees toward the zenith.”

“Ma’am, I’m receiving signal noise indicating an asteroid field.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration and keyed in a few more commands. “Yeah, looks like you’re right. Okay, scratch that, Jensen. Make that three point one two degrees away from the zenith. We’ll lose a bit of clarity, but the signal should hold long enough for their little chat.”

“Roger.”

“Uh, hello. Excuse me? I’m here for the projector…” you said as you tiptoed further into the room.

“Droid already fixed it,” one of the techs said without looking away from his screen. “It’s just cleaning up now.”

You turned into the main chamber. Sure enough, an extremely tall droid was hunched over a projector integrated in a glossy black table at the room’s center. You wagered a guess that this was your missing coworker. _Well, he’s not decommissioned. That’s a relief._

“X-323,” you called out, stepping forward to join him at the table. “Hello.”

Exthree turned from his work. “The repair is completed,” he replied.

“I see that. Stealing my jobs, are you?”

“On the contrary, you appeared quite unconscious at the time the request for repair came in from the Command Center.”

“What was the courier for, then?”

He turned completely away from the projection system and stood up. The top of his head nearly touched the ceiling. “Courier? To inform you of the need for repair?”

“Yes…”

“This occurred after the request already came in through the system?” It was more a statement than a question, really, more of a ‘wow, these moronic organic lifeforms’ than a request for clarification.

You tucked a piece of hair behind your ear. “I suppose so. That would explain the oversight.”

Exthree shook his head. “How unnecessary.”

You shrugged and set your jacket down in a crumpled ball on the tabletop. “What was wrong with the projector?”

“A lens was misaligned. It was a simple repair.”

“To be sure,” you replied with a shrug. You wrapped your right hand around your left and cracked your knuckles. “Mind if I take a look?”

“No.” He took two steps to the side, providing you with enough room to peer into the cavity housing most of the lenses and circuitry for the integrated systems.

“Yeah, I see.” You whistled and stood up straight again. “The First Order really seems to have a problem with keeping their lenses aligned.” As you stepped away from the projector to allow Exthree to finish clean-up, you noticed that your _favorite_ person had entered the room along with a few equally edgy-looking associates. _Eager to start this meeting, I guess._

Considering all of the times that he tried to kill you, you assumed that he expected some kind of fearful response; considering all of the times that he _failed_ to kill you, you weren’t in the mood to play the part of the quivering underling. The extent to which you did not give a fuck about Kylo Ren’s antics was well-nigh indescribable. “Oh, hello,” you said simply. As an afterthought, you threw in a flippant wave.

General Hux and Captain Phasma stepped in a moment later, and you caught yourself automatically correcting your posture. “The repair’s almost done,” you announced to no one in particular. “Exthree- er, X-323’s just cleaning things up. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

Hux nodded, not happily, but tolerantly, and you turned back to the table to act very interested in what Exthree was doing, which, at this point, was nothing but dusting. “Why’s this wire out here?” you muttered to him under your breath.

“There is an issue with the chronometer display. At this point, its function is irrelevant.”

“Chrono display? Well I can fix that.” You reached in.

After standing up from the floor (you’d received a nice dose of electricity from touching a wire that you stupidly assumed wasn’t live because Exthree had been working on the unit, even though _he had safety systems built in to prevent him from being damaged by such trite levels of current_ ), you turned back to the Important People. “Not to worry. That’s happened before.”

From beneath their cloaks and helmets, you could see that Kylo Ren’s little entourage was struggling to maintain their composure. You folded your arms and quirked an eyebrow at them. _Oh, so you’ve never seen a person get electrocuted before. Well, you **obviously** didn’t go to an engineering school._ Ren himself, however, remained unmoving, as did the general and captain, so you stopped silently sassing the Knights, bowed apologetically, grabbed your jacket, and took your leave. Exthree followed you out.

“Oh- um, ex-cuse me? Excuse me?”

You turned to see a fairly short tech with cropped but messy hair in a poorly-fitting uniform. In a word, he was unimposing. _A nobody. Might as well humor him, I guess._ You waved Exthree along and turned to him. “Yes?” you asked with the quiet confidence of someone who had just walked out of a successful job interview and hadn’t just been electrocuted. It was always easy to establish a position of dominance with the techs. 

His hands were thrust so deep into his pockets that you were surprised he didn’t rip straight through them. “There’s, uh, there’s something else that needs a repair. We just haven’t sent out the requisition yet…”

You stared at his close-cut beard. _Avoiding eye contact too? He should be easy to get rid of._ “You know,” you said, perhaps a bit too loudly considering your present company. “I’m getting asked to do quite a few repairs for being an engineer hired to design new technology.”

The tech took a few steps back, but remained. “I’m sorry. I know. My cousin works, er, _worked_ , in weapons design and he’s had to fix all of the blasters lately. Uh, but, um, anyway, we’re supposed to be getting laser guidance…” he began as he fidgeted with his collar. “I can show you to the conduit. I think it’s more of a power issue? It’s over by the main chamber-”

You furrowed your brows. This guy seemed meek, but not stupid. “Then call an electrical engineer. If you need a lens, that’s another story, but, uh…” You gestured back to said main room with your thumb. “You saw what just happened there, right?”

His already slouchy posture worsened. “Well, yeah, but… I mean, you’re already here and you really do seem to know what you’re doing.”

“Well, that’s correct, of course, but still, you should call in the appropriate man for the job. I’m sure all of the EEs are twiddling their thumbs right now; it’s not like we’re wiring new base components yet.”

“We’re not? I thought we were setting up shop here for the long haul.” He sounded confused, and, in so doing, made you confused.

“I don’t think that we are...are we? Maybe we are." You waved it off. "No matter. I don’t look into these things.” You fell silent. He remained silent. It grew a bit awkward, then quite awkward, then awkward enough to make you cave and accept the wiring job. “Okay,” you sighed. “Show me where it is.”

His morose face brightened somewhat. “Right away.”

You began to walk toward the area you had skittishly scooted out of only moments ago. The meeting had started, evidently; various terse remarks bounced around the room, leaving you able to catch snippets from the conduit just outside the now-closed door. Initial inspection of the bundles of wires inside of it indicated that nothing was out of place. You turned to the tech, who seemed quite distracted by the chatter in the meeting room.

You drummed your fingers against the wall. “There’s, uh, nothing the matter in here.”

His eyebrows met, two sad concave-up curves, as he frowned. “But we haven’t been able to activate the beam during alignment. There must be something.” At that moment, he sounded _incredibly_ desperate for a low-level employee. You’d always assumed that employees of his rank just did what they needed to get by without getting fired. No more, no less.

“I can...look again?” An obliging fake smile forced its way onto your lips.

“Please! If they lose the signal now-”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. I get it.” You waved him off and returned to the nest of wires, at this point sure that the tech was, in fact, a Resistance spy.

_His neck is really tan. How in space could his neck possibly be tan if all he does is sit in a darkened comm center? And asking me to fix this non-issue? He’s obviously stalling for time. They must be **really** pressed for intel if they’re sending out amateurs like this guy._

You resigned to tell Kylo Ren about him as soon as they finished their meeting. That way, he could work out his (inevitable) frustrations by killing somebody that was not only not you, but also an actual factual enemy of the First Order. As you played around with the wires, sorting them by color, then size, then planet of origin, you smiled.

_Tonight just might be a hot chocolate-worthy night._

\--------------------  
\--------------------

You caught a few snippets of dialogue during the meeting, but frankly weren’t paying close enough attention to glean anything useful. As you twisted wires around one another and looked around the conduit with a penlight, you heard:

“We need to move as quickly as possible. This sector isn’t secure.”

“I’ll have my people take care of it.”

“-are all expendable. We have enough funding to-”

And other typical remarks of that nature. It was nothing too unusual. You weren’t so fond of their ‘we, the important people, will be leaving soon’ mentality and the ‘the underlings are all expendable’ parts, but what else was new? After exhausting every possible method to waste time with the wires, you gave up and just sort of picked at your nails for a while.

When the Knights and officials filtered out of the meeting room, you stood just off to the side from the door, the ‘tech’ right beside you. Ren was the fourth to leave. He was angry, indeed, and stormed out at about one and a half times his normal storming speed. You took one last glance backward, catching the spy in your periphery, then stepped forward. _Time to strike._

“Excuse me, sir.”

“What?” His voice sounded a bit scratchier than normal, even through the synthesizer. _Well, he **was** shouting near the end..._

You leaned back, slammed the conduit panel shut, and pointed at the tech with a sweeping, grandiose gesture. “Resistance spy.”

Ren was on him like a bacta patch to a scrape on the knee. In the single stride that it took him to reach the now _absolutely terrified man_ , the saber was on and swinging. With a single plunge, Mr. Fake Tech was no more. The blade hissed as it cut through and instantly cauterized the flesh. You’d never seen a saber working, well, working at _killing someone_ , up close. Needless to say, you were impressed.

The body slumped to the floor. Ren deactivated the blade and turned to you.

“What did he tell you?”

You cocked your head. “Tell me? Nothing.”

“Then how did you know that he was a spy?”

“His neck was tanned,” you replied matter-of-factly. You briefly considered leaning against the wall, but that was a bit too confident a gesture.

“And? There _is_ light on this planet, you realize.”

You nodded your concession. “Touché.”

“It is, in fact, possible that he went outside for an hour.”

You blinked twice. _Is he trying to turn this **against** me? Unbelievable._ You scoffed and tossed a hand in the air. “Then maybe he was just too nosy and asked me to do a nonexistent repair to get closer to the meeting room. Either way, he’s dead now. Problem solved.”

“There is a difference between casual insubordination and infiltration on a grand scale.”

You shrugged. “He looked like a rebel to me. He wasn’t wearing his uniform correctly.”

He brought a gloved hand to where his forehead would be were he not wearing his Hat of Intimidation, aka, helmet. “ _You_ aren’t wearing your uniform correctly.”

You looked at your ensemble, from jacket to boots, then back up at him. “This is nothing new. Mine’s deliberate. His was _just_ close enough to correct that it’s clear he made a mistake. He didn’t do his research, or he forgot it. Look.” You pointed at the corpse. “Nobody wears their sleeves rolled up like that. It’s the most ridiculous way to wear sleeves that I’ve ever seen. I mean, granted, he wasn’t like the rebels in Starkiller Base; he was almost matching everyone els-”

Ren held up a hand to stop you. Use of The Force wasn’t necessary; you immediately got what he had honed in on. “Rebels in Starkiller Base,” he intoned. “Describe them.” 

_Does it matter? The Base is **atomized**._ “A, uh, a guy in a Resistance jacket and girl in some desert cross-body bathing suit thing. Crazy-looking, carrying a blaster...” A new sensation came to your head, like some sort of thought headache. _Ow. Uncomfortable._

“...You didn’t attempt to stop them?” His tone was low, menacing.

“I’m sorry, what was I supposed to do, exactly? Throw a hammer at them?” The headache sensation faded. “Was that thought-probing?”

He ignored the question, electing instead to continue berating you. (Surprise, surprise.) “You could have alerted nearby stormtroopers.”

“Oh, right, because they have such _fantastic_ aim.”

“Unbelievable.” He turned to leave.

“Well, forgive me for thinking that you might like to kill a guy to relieve some stress from your meeting. It seemed like your kind of thing.” He stopped in his tracks and turned back around.

“H-”

A series of klaxons cut him off before he could reply. You peered discreetly inside the conduit. _That wasn’t my fault, was it?_ You turned back to him. He appeared to be saying something, but you couldn’t make any of it out over the noise.

“What?”

“LEAVE.”

“Why?”

 **“LEAVE.”**

_O-kay. Yeesh._ You started for what you thought was the main entrance. A firm grasp on your shoulder and subsequent push in the other direction guided you elsewhere. You glanced back at him as he flung his arm backward, adding a renewed energy to his fluttering cloak. _Space, what’s all the urgency for?_

_Just GET OUT._

_Okay, I **definitely** didn’t think that._ You reached up to put a hand over your ear as you passed by one of the main alarms, taking another glance backward in the process. 

_**It doesn’t matter.** _

_I think that it matters a LITTLE BIT. Normal people aren’t able to have conversations with other people IN THEIR HEADS. Is this going to persist or-_ The entrance. Just ahead. You were propelled through it, this time with a force that definitely wasn’t from his arm.

You sailed through the air, watching everything unfold in slow motion. A bright orange glow started as a speck deep inside the command shuttle, and grew and swelled into a great mass of light. The heat followed, casting quavering lines over the view as the blast grew until waves of flame burst through the main door and out into the night. Chunks of command shuttle flew in every direction, but you'd been propelled far enough away that most of them missed you. Ren made it out just after you, you noted with great relief. _Killing the guy that just saved me...yeah, that’d make for a decent guilt trip._

Your arm connected with the ground first. The coarse sand took a bite out of the skin before your head collided with one of the last remaining crusts of melting snow. Not a moment later, a hot, but (thankfully) dull piece of the ship's hull caught you in the foot. To your pleasant surprise, you didn’t get knocked unconscious. This was a positive for two reasons. One: you were about ninety-seven percent sure that you wouldn’t be injured enough to warrant an extended stay at the medcenter. Two: as you sat up, already feeling sore as you turned back to face him, you could say the following:

“Not a Resistance spy, huh?”


	7. Chapter VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your string of excellent luck was not yet over, it seemed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been gone for months? Ha, ha...what do you mean...
> 
> Anyway, here's a long and fairly action-packed chapter.

\----------  
\----------

“Bullshit.”

“Nope,” you replied, smiling through a mouthful of porridge. “All true. One hundred percent. Hundred and ten.” You waved your spoon through the air in a dramatic gesture. “There I was, facing certain death. I’d just found a Resistance spy, so I sicced Kylo ‘Angsty Knight’ Ren on him, then and there. Now, this guy, this spy, must have set off some sort of hidden explosive when he died, because moments later-” You drove the spoon into the porridge, sending some of it splattering against the sides of the bowl. “Boom, massive explosion. Alarms left and right. So I’m standing there thinking ‘this is the end, goodbye cruel world,’ right?” You reached for your cup of stim tea and took a tension-building sip. “But then, out of nowhere, he just force-throws me out of the shuttle to safety.” 

“In so doing, saving your life.” 

You nodded at Nat as you wiped a drop of tea from the corner of your mouth. He looked doubtful. “Exactly. And it wasn’t a ‘get out of my way’ throw, either. It was very clearly a separate maneuver.” You ended the story with an anticlimactic shrug, then, elbows on the table, propped your head in your hands to wait for further questions.

“Maybe he was trying to kill you,” Marsa offered.

You nodded agreement and took another bite of your standard-issue breakfast. “Maybe so. The galaxy may never know.”

“But anyway, please, explain the injuries,” Nat piped up. “Or how you got them, anyway. I’ve seen far worse on armored units in exactly the same situation.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” You held up your bandaged arm. “So this one-”

\--------------------  
\--------------------

“Do you require assistance?”

Your eyes flew open and you stared at large metal feet in the sand. “Exthree! Yes! I’m sure it’s just the adrenaline giving me a _serious_ high right now! I can almost guarantee that I’m going to be in a _lot_ of pain pretty soon!”

“There’s no need to yell.”

“Am I yelling?!- Am I yelling?” You stretched your jaw to pop your ears. “Sorry, my ears are ringing a little. Anyway, though, if you could help me up- okay.”

You were swiftly hoisted into the air by your synthetic partner in crime. Exthree’s arms were long enough that he could carry you in a sitting position; there was no need for any of that embarrassing ‘bridal style’ nonsense. You held onto his left arm with your bleeding right one to stabilize yourself. “Hope I don’t rust any of your joints with this.”

“I do not rust.”

“Right.” You leaned back against his torso to better endure the slight bounce of his steps. It was almost like being on a very boring swing. You looked back toward the shell of what was very recently the command center. Ren was still there, and standing already. Already better off than you, and he’d been much closer to the blast. You watched him cast off an underling offering assistance like someone swatting an insect away. _Well, perks of being strong with the Force..._ “Hey, do you know if there are any casualties- ow, _space,_ my foot hurts.”

“None have been reported.”

You nodded and turned around. “You were back at the workshop by the time this happened, weren’t you? You tilted your head back to look into his photoreceptors. “Did you come back to save your wonderful co-worker, Exthree?”

“No. It is emergency protocol. I am equipped with medical-grade cauterization and disinfection equipment, and must therefore respond when medical attention is expected to be required.”

“Ah,” you said simply, returning to your original position. “Somehow, that makes me feel better.” This was a blatant falsehood, but you were transitioning to the nonsense-spewing part of trauma. You looked down at your foot and immediately regretted it. “Do you think this is too damaged to repair with surgery?”

He didn’t look down, continuing his steady plod to the medcenter undeterred. “Your boot?”

“No, Exthree, my foot. It really hurts, Exthree.” And _there_ came the tears. _Curse you, unavoidable side effects of traumatic injury._ You frowned and gripped the droids arm tighter. “It really hurts. I mean, it’s an eleven on a one-to-ten scale.” You paused to sputter a bit and wipe your eyes on the sleeve of your jacket. (Bad idea. It was _full_ of sand.) “They’re- ow, sithspit!- they’re not going to replace it, right? I know they’re really eager to go right ahead with robotic prosthetics around here.” No response. “I’ve never broken a bone, Exthree. I _really_ don’t want a new foot.” Again, no response. _He’s probably trained to keep people calm with his stoic silence._ Your lower eyelids overflowed and streams of tears ran down your cheeks. You let them stay their course rather than refill your eyes with sand. “Exthree, come on pal, give me the facts.”

“It is not bleeding, nor are any portions of it absent. According to my records, that bodes well.”

You forced a smile, but rolled your tearful eyes. “Thanks Exthree, that means a lot-ow, fuck!”

“Is something the matter?”

“No, no,” you forced through gritted teeth. “Carry on, friend. We’re almost there.” One of the shreds of fabric from your jacket sleeve had adhered to your sand-peeled arm, and a slight adjustment of your grip on Exthree’s arm had just pulled it free. “More pain now, less pain later, right?”

“There exists no correlation between the two.”

You spent the rest of the walk to the medcenter in dazed silence.

\--------------------  
\--------------------

Your string of excellent luck was not yet over, it seemed. Who should be the nurse assigned to your care but Joni? Joni, whose life you’d casually threatened in your journey to return Kylo Ren’s lightsaber. As Exthree set you down on an examination table, you nodded a hello, hoping that her medical oath would take precedent over any unresolved grudges. To your minor relief, she didn’t look up from your foot right away.

“Hi there! Seems like you’ve gotten into a bit of trouble, huh?” She glanced up to tell Exthree to go, and you caught her gaze. Recognition flickered across her face, and you murmured a hello. She glanced back at your foot and her expression changed. “Let’s just get this boot off first, huh?”

You nodded, and quietly locked every muscle in preparation for the worst. _Well, here it comes. I might not have needed a new foot before, but I’ll need one now-_

Joni quietly took out a laser cutter and delicately sliced away strips of burnt leather until she could extract your foot from it without any strain. After she threw the last chunk of the boot into a waste container, she looked back up at you and smiled. You tried not to faint with relief.

_Oh, to be a nice person. Must be why she’s with the medical staff._ “Th-thanks.” You looked at your hand. It was shaking. _On the other hand, maybe she just likes to torment people._

“Certainly.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out a portable scanner which she waved over your foot. “Hmm...well, you’ve got a moderately bad bone bruise and a sprained ankle, but nothing’s broken. You won’t need a boot, though. Just try to stay off of it for a little while if you can.”

“Uh-huh, sure.”

“Now, this jacket…” She used the laser cutter again, this time cutting off the entire sleeve. 

_It’s a good thing we’re due for warm weather,_ you thought as you watched her artfully dismantle the rest of your jacket before going for the shreds adhered to your arm with a pair of tweezers. Watching her work wasn’t doing anything great for your stomach, but you followed her movements with laser focus anyway. After pulling the last piece of torn fabric off, she reached across her supply cart for an atomizer. 

“This’ll sting,” she announced, not giving you any time to process the remark before dousing your arm in disinfecting spray.

“Wh- OW! O-kay, then!” It wasn’t loud enough for the entire medcenter to hear, but you were sure that your neighbors on both sides heard the exclamation. “You were _not_ kidding.”

She stifled a laugh as she reached for bandages and salve. “Yep. That’s the worst of it, though. Time to cover everything up.” After putting on a borderline excessive amount of salve, she wrapped the bandage around a few times, humming tunelessly as she worked. Once a thick layer of cloth covered the wound, she unwound the roll a bit more and snipped it free, tucked the loose end behind the outermost layer, and used a few clasps to better stick everything in place. You didn’t look away once. “Now,” she said as she put the roll of gauze away, “you’re supposed to come back for bandage replacements a few times, but I can just give you the supplies to do it yourself so you can stay the _hell_ out of my medcenter.”

You looked at her in surprise. _So she’s not all sugar and politeness after all._ “Uh...will do.”

She tilted her head and smiled as she thrust a fully-packed medkit into your arms. “If you need to wash your face, there’s a sink out the door and to your right. Bye, now! Heal well!”

You found Exthree just outside of the compartment where Joni had worked her magic on your extremities and handed him the medkit. “I need to wash my face.”

“I can assist you-”

“No need. I can limp there myself, thanks.” You hobbled past a few groups of medcenter staff and a patient or two before arriving at the sink. After taking a cursory glance at your filthy face in the mirror, you splashed water onto your forehead and cheeks with your less scraped hand, balancing on your good foot all the while. _Could be worse._ You repeated the process until your face was as clean as you were going to get it without a shower.

You left the medcenter leaning on Exthree with a fully-wrapped arm, a very sore and swollen foot, and an enormous wave of self-pity. “How am I supposed to do repairs with this?” you whined, raising your arm stiffly to glare at it.

“Carefully,” Exthree replied.

“And slowly,” you added with a groan. “You’ll have to do a lot more work until I get some more motion in my fingers, Ex.”

“I already perform the majority of repairs.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go _that_ far. Who’s the one that fixes the lightsaber all the time?”

“One time is not all of the time.”

“I repaired it before we got here too, Ex.”

“As we did not work together previously, any repairs that you have conducted prior to working with me are inadequate items for comparison.”

“Inadequate? Oh, really?”

And so your banter continued until you passed Kylo Ren and fell silent. His angry stride had taken on a bit of a limp, but he appeared otherwise unscathed. You stopped walking, and Exthree dutifully followed suit. As your gaze traced the edges of his waving (and now slightly shredded) cape, you listened to the droid’s internal mechanisms settle into an idle state.

It was your intention to call out some sort of thanks. You parted your lips to speak, but soon closed them again when you realized that you one: didn’t really know how to phrase a ‘thanks for saving my life’ remark in an offhanded but respectful manner, and two: didn’t want to unintentionally paint the terrifying attack hound of the First Order as the kind of guy to just up and help people for no apparent reason. Streams of people walking in every direction parted around you, and as you watched them pass in front of your field of view, Ren disappeared into the crowd. _Well, there goes that opportunity._

\--------------------  
\--------------------

“-and that’s about where that story ends.” You reached for your spoon again. “I should regain full mobility in about a week and a half, and my foot’ll be completely healed in two months. Hopefully.”

“So, wait-” Marsa replied, holding up a hand as if her statement weren’t enough. “Hang on. You’ve been repairing Kylo Ren’s-” You frowned and leaned across the table at her with furrowed brows and a finger to your lips.

“Could we maybe be a _little_ quieter with that?” you hissed. She complied.

“You’ve been repairing Kylo Ren’s lightsaber since we were back at Starkiller Base?”

You leaned back in your seat. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I have.”

“And you didn’t _tell us_?” she cut back, arms crossed, fraught with disbelief.

_Of **course** she chose that to hone in on. Of all of the selfish-_ “No,” you replied with a faint shake of your head. “I didn’t. It didn’t seem necessary, and you never really asked.”

Marsa responded, as you expected, with a sniff and a roll of her eyes. You shrugged.

“Well, it’s true, is it not?” you asked, posing the question to both of them. “You didn’t ask.” To your satisfaction, Nat gave a conciliatory nod. You nodded in his direction and added an intense, but silent _‘thank you!’_. “It’s also, you know, a bit of a high-security matter, correct?” Eyebrows raised, you waited for a reply.

“Correct,” she said in the most ‘screw you’ way possible. With that, she stood from the table and left, dragging her empty tray over the metal tabletop as she went.

You stared at the wall for a moment as the squeak of metal on metal faded to silence. _Well, fan-kriffing-tastic._ “She’s just being unreasonable as usual right?” you asked Nat wearily. 

He crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat. “A bit, yeah, but you can’t blame her for expecting her friend to tell her such important things.”

“I suppose you’re right.” You turned to face him, resting your chin in your undamaged hand. “Think about it, though, purely from a practical standpoint. You can’t let information like that get around. That Ren’s down a lightsaber? That one random engineer is the one fixing it in a very low-security location without any guards on-hand?”

“You make a good point.”

As you were already monologuing, it was not hard to continue monologuing. “Everyone on the base thinks they can get ahead with information alone. One little scrap, one little shred, and you make or break a career. None of it matters to anyone who has any real power, of course. They’re all above the gossip and the noise. But to everyone down here? We’re like a colony of insects, operating in a hierarchy of hearsay.”

“Poetic,” Nat replied with a smirk. You rolled your eyes and it grew to a grin. “Oh, I get it. I get it completely. I just think you could’ve handled it a little better with Marsa in particular.”

“Well, I’m open to suggestions the next time I have to repair what’s effectively a superweapon. Pass along all of your favorite tips.”

“Will do.”

You sighed into your now-empty bowl and told Nat goodbye before making your own exit from the dining hall, or, rather, trying to. A wall of people, squirming as they stood shoulder to shoulder, blocked the doorway. You sighed and shifted your weight onto your good foot. _What’s the hold-up? Some stormtrooper forget how doors work?_ A moment later, they all started pushing back into the hall. You watched their faces as they retreated; they were panicky, full of barely-contained concern. What was initially jittery silence swelled to frenzied babbling. You looked back at Nat. He slowly stood, propping himself up against the tabletop with his palms.

Droves of worried faces passed in front of you as you slowly made your way back to the table. You recognized one of them from the mechanical engineering department on Starkiller Base and leaned forward to ask what was going on. When he didn’t hear, you tapped him on the shoulder and tried again. Again, he didn’t hear you. People crashed into both of you, knocking your shoulders this way and that. You curled them inward to shield your arm a bit, but decided that you couldn’t do anything about your foot after half a dozen people had already tromped over it. “What’s going on?”

“Th~ reb~ls~ o~t~ide.”

“What?”

He frowned and stuck his arm out to push a few people out of the way. “Th~y’r~ t~in~ t~ br~k ~pe~ th~ do~r.”

You looked back, face blank. “Yeah, sorry, I’m getting little to none of this.”

He strained against the crowd. “Rebels!”

“Again?”

“What do you mean agai-”

The door rang out. Someone had fired at it from the other side. Anyone still by the entrance retreated.

All at once, everything fell silent. You limped back toward Nat, keeping your eyes on the entryway. Shouts bled in from outside. They were unmistakable: the overconfident calls of the rebel fleet. From what you could make out, there were a lot of them. People started backing into corners and taking cover under tables. Anyone with a blaster on hand readied it.

You jumped when you backed into the table. Nat took hold of your arm and pulled you next to him. You turned, frankly more agitated that you were being attacked twice in two days than scared of the group outside. “That’s the only way out, isn’t it?” you muttered. “That door?” Another couple of rounds connected with the metal, buckling it a bit. A tech near the door yelped. Twenty-odd people shushed him.

“Most of the viewports are sealed, but there’s one in the back whose seal is cracked. I could probably get it open. Grab that knife.”

You took hold of it and pressed it into his palm. He nodded. “Let’s go.”

As the blaster-fire on the door escalated, you left the main hall and snuck to the dishwashing area in the back. It was, for the moment unoccupied. When the door panel slid closed you spoke up again.

“Where do you suppose Marsa is?”

Nat rolled up his sleeves and jogged over to the viewport. “Her quarters, I hope. Not dead, I hope.”

“Not dead _we_ hope.”

“Tell me you’re not arguing over semantics when we’re about to be murdered by the Resistance.”

“Nat, I’ll always argue over semantics.”

He rolled his eyes and checked his chrono before driving the knife into the seal holding the viewport in place. “Who the hell attacks a base at nine-hundred thirty-seven?” he scoffed as he worked the utensil back and forth, pulling pieces of sealant from the frame as they came free. “And they call themselves organized.”

Screaming started, followed closely by blaster-fire. You quietly walked over to the door and locked it by shorting out its control panel (pouring an old cup of coffee from a nearby countertop onto it). “Uh, how’s that seal coming along?”

“We’re close.” A stray shot hit the door and you ducked further into the room.

“How close?”

“Done.” He ripped out the last remaining bit of sealant and stood back, arms crossed in satisfaction. “Alright, now we just need to get the panel out...”

“Already got it.” You took hold of a nearby vibromop and drove the pointy end of the handle into the center of the viewport. The panel splintered in a rather beautiful series of spindly segmented rings. You hit it again; about a sixth of the pieces popped out and landed on the floor. “Oh,” you said after hitting the panel a third time, “while I’m at this, could you explain to me how you were aware of this minor and insignificant flaw in the construction of this makeshift dining hall?”

“I helped install the dishwasher when we first got here.”

“Fair enough.” Another whack, and the viewport was mostly gone. You wiped your brow with your sleeve and ran the vibromop handle along the edge to knock out any remaining shards. “Alright, let’s go,” you said as you set the mop against the wall. “You first.”

“What, so I can clear out any leftover pieces of transparisteel with my torso when I climb through?”

“No, so you can be a good person and catch your friend with the moderately injured foot.”

He conceded, pulled himself up with the top of the viewport frame, and went through feet-first. “Hand me the vibromop,” he hissed through the opening a moment later. You reached for it, but paused halfway through.

“What for?”

“A weapon.”

“Are there rebels near you?” You glanced outside, but couldn’t see any from where you were standing.

“I expect there will be very soon,” he muttered back. You watched his hand as he stuck it inside. “Mop,” he repeated, wiggling his fingers in anticipation. You pushed the handle into it. “Tha-ank you!” he lilted as he pulled it through. You ducked out of the way to avoid getting hit by the mop’s head as he swung it toward himself.

“Hey, you can still catch me, right?”

“Yeah, hang on.” He set the mop down and slid so that he was just next to the window. “Yeah, go.”

“Okay…” You climbed up onto the nearest countertop so you wouldn’t have to pull yourself straight up, relying on your good foot and arm to get you there. “All set.” Careful to stay balanced, you stretched and stuck your injured foot through the opening.

“Wait!” Nat shot back. He brought a hand to rest on the sole of your shoe, but didn’t press on it.

“What?” you hissed.

“Someone’s coming. Hold on.”

“Can’t you just pull me through first?! It’s really starting to sound like a bloodbath in here.”

“Hold. On.” 

Seconds later, two rebels rounded the corner of the building. You yanked your foot back inside and watch Nat take care of both of them without any apparent difficulty. It seemed that the vibromop did indeed prove a good makeshift weapon; both scruffy men were on the ground after one or two hits. Immediate threat gone, you tried leaving the building again.

“Impressive,” you remarked as Nat caught you. “You weren’t trained to fight, were you?”

He ran a hand through his hair to flatten it down; the fight had made about a third of it stand straight up. “Only as much as you were when you enlisted. Simple firing range stuff. No hand-to-hand.”

You subconsciously tucked a few stray strands behind your ear. “So, simply put, not really.”

“Not really, no.”

You took a look around as the sounds of chaos continued from the dining hall. “Shouldn’t I have a weapon? I feel like I should have a weapon, especially with the whole I-can’t-run-because-I-only-have-one-uninjured-foot thing.”

“I agree.” 

“So…” you took a few steps forward and knelt to flip one of the unconscious rebels over. “They have blasters on them, right?”

“At least one of them did.”

Sure enough, the rebel you flipped had a holstered blaster at his hip. You flipped in it your hands, then gripped it firmly, screwing one eye shut to test your aim as your finger twitched over the trigger. Nat repeated your actions, but you noticed that he continued to hold the mop, even with a blaster in hand.

“So, uh…” you chuckled, “you think you’ll be more effective with a vibromop?”

“Well, in close quarters, yeah. Or if we need to break another viewport.”

“I mean, we’re already outside, but…” You trailed off and glanced back down at the downed rebels. “Should we take their clothes?”

“Do you think we’re in some kind of spy story?” Nat said with a snarky smirk. “Furthermore, would you like to get shot by some of our confused troops?”

“Good point. Better to die at the hands of-” A new wave of clamor cut you off. These sounds were closer, clearly from outside rather than in the building. It didn’t sound like fighting either, more like running. Moving a lot of people from one point to another, anyway. A few shots peppered the general noise. You turned back to Nat. “Do you want to take our chances going that way?”

“Let’s see what the fuss is about first, huh?”

The two of you slid along the wall of the building until you reached the end nearest the noise, where you peered around the beveled metal panel that made up the corner. High-ranking troopers (you could tell by the pauldrons) waved along the resident Important People and picked off stray rebels as necessary. Their path ended in one of the larger shuttles. The engines were already on. You furrowed your brows. The people being slaughtered in the dining hall were very clearly not a matter of their concern.

“What is this, an evac?” You glanced back at Nat.

“Looks like.”

The lines between your brows deepened. “Those unappreciative _fucks_. Come on. Let’s go see if we can get on.”

“You’re crazy.”

You altered your grip on the pistol and straightened your posture. “No, Nat, just bitter.” You took a moment for a dramatic sigh. “Come along if you wish. If not, that’s probably a better idea, and I’d advise you to try to find Marsa.” With that, you lurched forward into the fray.

You took down one of the rebels on your walk (limp) to the boarding line with a single shot and quickly accepted it as the coolest you would ever look in your entire life. When you saw Suit 2.0 fidgeting next to a handful of other bureaucratic lackeys that were apparently more important than all of the engineers and med staff and soldiers that had already been taken out by the Resistance that morning, you picked up the pace and called out. “Hey!”

A number of people turned to you (nobody of any consequence, but still). To your extreme satisfaction, Suit 2.0 was one of them. Another few rebels headed toward the line and you fired toward them. You missed by a lightyear. Shaking it off, you continued until all that separated you from Suit 2.0 was a row of incredibly heavily armed guards. _Practically nothing, right? Just instant death four or five times over._ “What’s this evac for?”

Suit 2.0 squirmed, but started to answer anyway. “It’s been decided that-”

Right then, an explosion punched a large and jagged hole in the side of the dining hall. About fifteen rebels burst out and ran toward the boarding line, shouting motivational phrases back and forth all the way.

_Well, they’re stupid, but clearly, they’re the good ones if they’ve made it this long._ You shuffled away from the main line of fire, took aim and hit one of them (not of the one that you aimed for, but, again, _still_ ). The actual guards quickly killed eight or nine. However, when an cocky freckled girl sporting twin braids and a pilot’s jacket winked and lobbed some kind of smoke bomb in your direction, it was game over for the First Order. Visibility in trooper helmets was already bad enough.

You took the opportunity to get out of the way of the majority of the fighting and take shelter near the shuttle’s boarding ramp (climbing directly onto the elevated target area and trying to enter seemed too risky at the moment). It was for the best, anyway; your foot was absolutely throbbing in pain, and you’d definitely twisted the cut on your arm way too much, to the point that the bandage had slid out of place. _Enough impromptu action for one day._ You bit down on your bottom lip and leaned against the metal as you pushed the bandage back into place on your arm. Once _that_ quick burst of searing pain was out of the way, you quietly took in the rest of the fight. 

_So, here’s the battle. Plenty of easy targets. Where’s Ren, though?_ And _there_ was that telltale sound, that deep, crackling thrum. A crimson blade cut through the smoke. You rolled your eyes. _Never mind._ As the smoke cleared, more and more of his (incredibly impressive) shenanigans were unveiled. Dramatic twists, barely-contained sweeping slices through the air, mortal wounds left and right. _Nice to see he hasn’t broken it again...yet._ Screams of pain, collapsing rebels, the works. He was clearly enjoying himself. As the center of the battle slid closer and closer to your hiding spot, you felt concern pull at your chest. _I can just climb up if it gets too close. I'll go when they’re close enough for me to hit them reliably._ You shifted to minimize your surface area just in case any blaster-fire happened to come your way.

When a group of four young guys tried to gain an advantage by taking Ren on all at once, he pulled the saber to his side and swept a hand in front of them in a wild semicircle. It knocked them all back like leaves in a windstorm. You were incredibly impressed, but didn’t have time to fully appreciate the gesture. Movement in the corner of your eye drew your gaze to a rebel in an empty area of the battle field. She was crouched behind a few tufts of plant life, toying with a mechanism for something. You squinted. For a...bomb? A grenade? Relying on the ramp to steady your arm, you aimed in her direction and fired. She lurched back. A hit in the shoulder, it looked like. Not enough to kill her, but enough to scare her off.

You were incredibly proud of your handiwork- for a few milliseconds, until you were flung from the ramp. You landed flat on your back a couple of meters away, breathless and already feeling the bruises. The echo of your molars knocking together with the collision bounced through your head.

Opening your eyes would have been useless; you already knew. You already _kriffing_ knew. Every muscle tensed. Your fingernails bit into your palms. You were _irate_. It took an enormous amount of effort to pull your clenched jaws apart to speak.

“Correct me...if I’m wrong.” You started, barely speaking. “But...isn’t it true...that you can see things...WITH YOUR MIND?”

You were pulled to your feet.


	8. AUTHOR'S NOTE AND QUESTIONS (TO BE REMOVED AT A LATER DATE)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coupla quick questions for you.

Hey there. It's been a while.

One: Are people still interested in reading this? I might post another chapter while I'm on break and _finally have a kriffing second_ to write for fun.

Two: Would people potentially be interested in reading other stuff (other genres, other source material, et cetera)? I don't have anything yet; this is just a hypothetical. It'd probably be a sci-fi something-or-other, but maybe not. I suppose I could also potentially take requests at some point...?

Thanks for your responses, and...uh, yeah, sorry for ghosting for so long.

-SignedSealedAndDigitized


End file.
